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Rosaceae family

Shiny Cotoneaster Cotoneaster lucidus

Shiny Cotoneaster is an introduced perennial shrub, found in the lower 48 states.

More about this plant

Cotoneaster lucidus, the shiny cotoneaster, or hedge cotoneaster, is a deciduous, medium-sized shrub with long, spreading branches reaching heights of 6' to 10'. It is native to parts of northern Asia, and adapted to tolerate colder weather (to zone 4). C. lucidus was described in 1856 by Diederich Franz Leonhard von Schlechtendal. Some authorities consider it to be a synonym of Cotoneaster acutifolius, the Peking cotoneaster. Wikipedia →

Growing & care

USDA PLANTS · TRY
Conditions
Sources · Conditions
Cold hardiness (derived) — Hardiness
Hardiness
≥ zone 6 derived from its U.S. range
Size & form
Sources · Size & form
USDA PLANTS — Lifespan
TRY Plant Trait Database (CC BY 4.0) — Foliage
McKenzie et al. 2025 — community-science image analysis (MIT) — Flower colour
Lifespan
Perennial
Foliage
Broadleaf
Flower colour
White AI AI image-analysis of community-science photos (~87% expert agreement) — not a botanical record
In the garden
Shrub layer — Sits in the shrub 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 ~3 caterpillar species

Cotoneaster supports ~3 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 modest genus for introduced plants — native genera typically support far more.

Recorded feeding on Cotoneaster in North America, including:

Acleris variegana · leafroller moth Acrobasis indigenella · Leaf Crumpler Moth Athrips rancidella · twirler moth Basilarchia lorquini · brush-footed butterfly Carcina quercana · concealer moth Choreutis pariana
+ 5 more species →
Hyalophora cecropia · Cecropia Moth Phyllonorycter mespilella · leaf-blotch miner moth Rhodophaea supposita · snout moth Spilonota ocellana · leafroller moth Trachycera suavella · snout moth
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).
Wildlife & visitors 1 bird

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

Recorded eaten by 1 bird species (fruit, seed, browse):

Passer domesticus · House Sparrow
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 — Warren II 2026 (CC0) · Tallamy host-use counts
[10] Functional traits — TRY Plant Trait Database (CC BY 4.0)
[11] Cold hardiness (derived) — Derived from U.S. range × USDA PHZM zones
[12] Wildlife & visitors — GloBI — Global Biotic Interactions (CC0)
[15] Caterpillar host count — Warren II 2026 (Dryad, CC0) · Tallamy host-use counts
[16] 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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