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Sapotaceae family

Bastard Redwood Chrysophyllum argenteum

Native

Bastard Redwood is a perennial tree native to Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. It grows to 15 ft, with blue fruit.

More about this plant

Chrysophyllum argenteum is a tree in the family Sapotaceae, native to the tropical Americas. Wikipedia →

Growing & care

USDA PLANTS · TRY
Conditions
Sources · Conditions
USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503) — Fertility Requirement / Soil Adaptation — Fertility need · Adapts to
USDA — Temp-Min °F — Hardiness
Fertility need
Medium
Adapts to
Coarse (sandy), Medium (loam)
Hardiness
USDA zone 11+
Size & form
Sources · Size & form
USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503) — Height, Mature — Height
Tallo — Jucker et al. 2025 (CC BY 4.0) — wild crown width — Mature width
USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503) — Planting Density (per acre) — Spacing
USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503) — Growth Rate / Spread / Growth Form / Lifespan / Active Growth Period / Seed Period — Growth form · Active growth
USDA PLANTS — Lifespan
TRY Plant Trait Database (CC BY 4.0) · USDA PLANTS — Foliage
USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503) — Fruit/Seed Color / Fruit Persistence — Fruit
Height
15 ft
Mature width
≈ 30 ft wide wild/forest-grown — open-grown specimens spread wider
Spacing
8–12 ft apart from USDA planting density
Growth form
Single crown
Lifespan
Perennial
Foliage
Evergreen broadleaf · coarse texture
Active growth
Year-round
Fruit
Blue persists into winter
In the garden
Sources · In the garden
USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503) — Propagation Method / Commercial Availability — Propagate by
USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503) — Germination (cold stratification) — Seed starting
USDA PLANTS — Seed Period — Seeds ripen
USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503) — Foliage Texture / Browse Palatability / Resprout — Resprouts if cut
Propagate by
Seed
Seed starting
No stratification needed
Seeds ripen
Year-round seed-collection / harvest window
Resprouts if cut
No
Shrub layer — Sits in the shrub of a layered food forest or polyculture.Open guide →
Rain garden / bioswale — Rated FACW on the wetland list — tolerates wet feet, so it suits the soggy zone of a rain garden or bioswale that catches and filters runoff.Open guide →
derived roles
The garden year bloom → fruit → fall colour
J
F
M
A
M
J
J
A
S
O
N
D
Fruit
Ripe fruit
Fruit · approximate season (USDA Seed Period), clamped to after bloom · persists into winter
When to sow · for your area

Sow timing keys off your local last- and first-frost dates.

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 Chrysophyllum in North America, including:

Ephestia kuehniella · Mediterranean Flour Moth Erinnyis ello · Ello Sphinx
Named species (a documented Nearctic sample, not exhaustive) from NHM HOSTS (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 (2) Methods & honest limits
Leaf build Direct fact

We read each species’ measured specific leaf area (leaf area per unit dry weight) from the Global Spectrum dataset and band it: thin & fast (high SLA), medium, or thick & tough (low SLA). The global median is about 10 mm²/mg.

Honest limits: A species-mean from pooled measurements — individual plants vary with light and site. A broad strategy signal, not a precise per-plant figure.

Díaz, S. et al. (2022) The global spectrum of plant form and function: enhanced species-level trait dataset. Scientific Data 9:755.
Photosynthesis Direct fact

A recorded categorical fact: each species is tagged C3 (standard), C4 (heat/water-efficient) or CAM (succulent, night-time CO₂ uptake) — or a facultative combination. We only show a trait card for the noteworthy C4/CAM cases; C3 is the unremarkable majority, kept in the data but not surfaced as a card.

Kattge, J. et al. TRY plant trait database — Categorical Traits Dataset (2012).
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 (23) 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)
[14] Invasive / introduced status — USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503) — native status
[15] Wetland indicator — USACE National Wetland Plant List (2022)
[17] Description — Wikipedia (CC BY-SA)
[18] Ecological value — GloBI
[20] Functional traits — TRY Plant Trait Database (CC BY 4.0)
[21] Photosynthetic pathway — TRY Plant Trait Database (CC BY 4.0)
[23] Caterpillar species — NHM HOSTS (CC0)
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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