PlantKey Open ecological atlas
Planner
Home / Browse / Celtis / Lindheimer's Hackberry
iNaturalist — CC, credited & licensed per image
Ulmaceae family

Lindheimer's Hackberry Celtis lindheimeri

Native
Also known as: Lindheimer Hackberry

Lindheimer's Hackberry is a perennial tree native to the lower 48 states. It grows to 46 ft.

More about this plant

Celtis lindheimeri, also called Lindheimer's hackberry, is a species of tree in the family Cannabaceae. It is typically found in areas of central Texas and northeastern Mexico. It has a height averaging 9 meters, and produces a reddish-brown berry. It is a species closely related to netleaf hackberry which is common in western United States. The Spanish common name is "palo blanco", meaning "white tree", which is commonly used to identify this tree. It is named after its discoverer Ferdinand Lindheimer, a German-born botanical collector and Texas newspaper editor. Wikipedia →

Growing & care

USDA PLANTS · TRY
Conditions
Sources · Conditions
Cold hardiness (derived) — Hardiness
Hardiness
≥ zone 10 derived from its U.S. range
Size & form
Sources · Size & form
TRY Plant Trait Database (CC BY 4.0) — Height
USDA PLANTS — Lifespan
Height
46 ft
Lifespan
Perennial
In the garden
Canopy layer — Sits in the canopy of a layered food forest or polyculture.Open guide →
derived roles
Species characteristics from USDA PLANTS (public domain) + TRY (CC BY) — general guidance, not a guarantee for your exact site. Deer "browsing" is documented palatability, not a deer-proof claim.

Wildlife & pollinators

How pollinator value is scored →
❧ Caterpillar hosts ~43 caterpillar species

Celtis supports ~43 caterpillar species.

Native butterfly & moth caterpillars are the base of the terrestrial food web — most songbirds rear their young almost entirely on them. As a host for native Lepidoptera this is a strong genus.

Recorded feeding on Celtis in North America, including:

Adelpha fessonia · Band-Celled Sister ✦ Acronicta rubricoma · Ruddy Dagger Moth Alsophila pometaria · Fall Cankerworm Anisota virginiensis · Pink-Striped Oakworm Asterocampa celtis · Hackberry Emperor Asterocampa clyton · Tawny Emperor
+ 8 more species →
Asterocampa idyja · brush-footed butterfly Asterocampa leilia · Empress Leilia Automeris cecrops · Cecrops Eyed Silkmoth Automeris io · giant silk moth Automeris louisiana · giant silk moth Automeris randa · Rand's Eyed Silk Moth Basilarchia arthemis · brush-footed butterfly Caria ino · Red-Bordered Metalmark
Keystone count (genus-level) from Warren II 2026 (CC0) · Tallamy host-use records. Named species (a documented Nearctic sample, not exhaustive) from NHM HOSTS (CC0). ✦ = recorded on this exact species.
Species thumbnails re-hosted from iNaturalist — Creative Commons, credited per image (hover for credit). Click any species to see it on iNaturalist. Not exhaustive; many taxa have no openly-licensed photo yet.
How we know this (1) Methods & honest limits
Climate niche (heat tolerance & native rainfall) Derived

We take the plant’s U.S. county range and look up each county’s long-term climate, then summarise: native rainfall = the median annual rainfall across its counties; heat tolerance = the warm end (90th percentile) of average temperature across its range (mirroring how our cold-hardiness floor uses an extreme). Counties + medians blunt the roadside/observer bias that makes point-level climate unreliable. Needs at least five placeable counties.

Honest limits: A realized, sampling-biased niche (where it has been recorded, not its physiological optimum), and county climate is coarse — large Western counties span deserts and mountains. Derived guide, never a measured fact.

Realized-niche / climate-envelope approach (Pearson & Dawson 2003; Soberón 2007). Climate: NOAA NCEI nClimDiv county normals (1991–2020).
Derived values are computed from open data by a published method — labelled, cited, and never shown as a direct observation. Full methodology →
Sources for this entry (16) Open & cited
[01] Scientific name & family — USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503)
[02] Growth habit & duration — USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503)
[03] Native status & distribution — USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503)
[04] Common name — USDA PLANTS (via GBIF)
[05] Invasive / introduced status — USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503) — native status
[07] Description — Wikipedia (CC BY-SA)
[08] Ecological value — Warren II 2026 (CC0) · Tallamy host-use counts
[09] Conservation rank — NatureServe Explorer (CC BY)
[11] Climate niche — Derived — realized climate niche from U.S. county occurrences (GBIF) × NOAA NCEI county climate normals 1991–2020 (public domain)
[12] Cold hardiness (derived) — Derived from U.S. range × USDA PHZM zones
[13] Other common names — Wikidata (CC0)
[14] Caterpillar host count — Warren II 2026 (Dryad, CC0) · Tallamy host-use counts
[15] Caterpillar species — NHM HOSTS (CC0)
[16] County range — GBIF Open Data — open-licensed occurrences (CC0/CC-BY) → county
Spot an error or have a better photo? Every field links to its source, and the whole dataset is open.
Cite this page Open data, please attribute

PlantKey’s data is open under CC BY-SA 4.0 — free to reuse and adapt, with attribution and the same licence. Photos keep their own per-image licence + credit (see Sources above).

Citation

Loading…

BibTeX 
Loading…