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iNaturalist — CC, credited & licensed per image
Solanaceae family

Orange Jessamine Cestrum aurantiacum

Also known as: orange-flowering jessamine

Orange Jessamine is an introduced perennial tree, found in Hawaii.

More about this plant

Cestrum aurantiacum is a species of shrub in the potato family Solanaceae that is native to tropical regions of North and South America. Wikipedia →

⚠ Invasive here — plant a native instead USDA + GBIF

Orange Jessamine is flagged invasive in the U.S. These natives fill a similar niche — same growth habit, bloom season, height, and region — so you keep the look and feed local wildlife instead of spreading a problem.

Tropical Almond
Native
Tropical Almond
Terminalia catappa
●●●●●
Uhiuhi
Native
Uhiuhi
Caesalpinia kavaiensis
●●●●○
Wili Wili
Native
Wili Wili
Erythrina sandwicensis
●●●●○
Nioi
Native
Nioi
Eugenia koolauensis
●●●●○
Matched on growth habit · bloom months · mature height · shared U.S. range (USDA + GBIF) — a starting point, not a prescription.

Growing & care

USDA PLANTS · TRY
Size & form
Sources · Size & form
USDA PLANTS — Lifespan
McKenzie et al. 2025 — community-science image analysis (MIT) — Flower colour
Lifespan
Perennial
Flower colour
Yellow AI AI image-analysis of community-science photos (~87% expert agreement) — not a botanical record
In the garden
Tree layer (canopy / understory) — Sits in the tree of a layered food forest or polyculture.Open guide →
derived roles
AI = read by an AI vision model · DERIVED = a computed estimate, not a direct measurement. The “How we know this” section below details each.
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 Documented caterpillar host

Recorded feeding on Cestrum in North America, including:

Lacinipolia parvula · owlet moth Rachiplusia ou · owlet moth
Named species (a documented Nearctic sample, not exhaustive) from NHM HOSTS (CC0).
✦ Bees 1 bee visitor

1 native & managed bee species is documented visiting Orange Jessamine :

Bombus pensylvanicus · Sonoran Bumblebee
Visitor records (observations, not exhaustive) from Noori et al. 2026 (CC BY 4.0) · GloBI →
Wildlife & visitors 1 nectaring

Open records of who else uses Orange Jessamine — a generalist food-web signal, kept separate from the keystone Ecological Value.

1 adult butterfly & moth species is recorded nectaring at its flowers:

Dione vanillae
Interaction records (observations, not exhaustive) from GloBI → (CC0). Counts are distinct species; names are the most-recorded. Common names from Wikidata (CC0).
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
Flower colour Derived

McKenzie et al. assigned each species a flower colour with a GPT-4V vision model over iNaturalist photos. We use the confident tier plus a separately-labelled lower-confidence top-up (mostly inconspicuous green/brown flowers), and render it as a small tint — never as an asserted fact, and kept out of the written synopsis.

Honest limits: AI image inference (~87% expert agreement on the confident tier); a decorative, confidence-tiered indicator, not a measured trait.

McKenzie, P., Berardi, A.E., Hopkins, R. (2025). flower_color_phenology (MIT).
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 — US-RIIS v2.0 (USGS)
[07] Description — Wikipedia (CC BY-SA)
[08] Ecological value — GloBI
[09] Functional traits — TRY Plant Trait Database (CC BY 4.0)
[10] Wildlife & visitors — GloBI — Global Biotic Interactions (CC0)
[12] Other common names — Wikidata (CC0)
[14] Flower-visitor value (derived) — Noori et al. 2026 (CC BY 4.0) · GloBI
[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).

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