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Yellow-cedar — photo by Alexandre MATHIEU

iNaturalist — CC, credited & licensed per image

Rubiaceae family

Yellow-cedar Palicourea croceoides

Native

Yellow-cedar is a perennial tree native to Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

Growing & care

USDA PLANTS · TRY

Size & form

Sources · Size & form

USDA PLANTS — Lifespan

TRY Plant Trait Database (CC BY 4.0) — Foliage

Lifespan: Perennial
Foliage: Broadleaf

In the garden

Tree layer (canopy / understory) — Sits in the tree 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 →

✦ Bees 1 bee visitor

1 native & managed bee species is documented visiting Yellow-cedar :

Centris analis

Visitor records (observations, not exhaustive) from Noori et al. 2026 (CC BY 4.0) · GloBI →

Wildlife & visitors 1 bird

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

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

Spindalis portoricensis · Puerto Rican Spindalis

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.

Sources for this entry (13) 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

[06] Photos — iNaturalist — CC, credited per image

[07] Ecological value — GloBI

[08] Foliage — TRY Plant Trait Database (CC BY 4.0)

[09] Functional traits — TRY Plant Trait Database (CC BY 4.0)

[10] Wildlife & visitors — GloBI — Global Biotic Interactions (CC0)

[11] Mycorrhiza — FungalRoot v2.0 · Meng et al. 2024 (Dryad, CC0)

[12] Bee visitors — Noori et al. 2026 (Zenodo, CC BY 4.0) · via GloBI

[13] Flower-visitor value (derived) — Noori et al. 2026 (CC BY 4.0) · GloBI

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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Ecological value open data

2 / 5 Keystone

Keystone (host) value — caterpillar, specialist-bee & monarch hosting. A low number means “not a keystone host,” not “low value”: generalist flower-visitor value is shown separately below and in Bees & wildlife.

Caterpillar host 2

Flower-visitor value derived 1

Recorded flower-visitor breadth — observations, not a nectar measurement. open data

Deep dive

Caterpillar host · 2/5 — native butterfly & moth caterpillars that feed on this genus — the base of the food web (more caterpillars → more songbirds). Genus-level keystone count from Warren II 2026 (CC0; Tallamy host-use records), gap-filled by our GloBI derivation.

Counts are genus-level and banded 0–5. Full rubric →

Host / keystone value from open interaction data. How this is scored →

📍 In your area live

Native to the U.S.

Recorded in 2 states.

Native — Puerto Rico and U.S. Virgin Islands

Recorded in 2 states/territories

Conservation

Invasive? No

Toxicity & pet safety

Check the ASPCA pet database →

Educational, not veterinary advice. If you suspect your pet ate this plant, contact a vet or pet poison-control line.

Functional traits TRY · Dryad

Seed mass large

200 mg

large seed — easy to hand-collect & direct-sow; vigorous seedlings

Leaf nitrogen above avg

26.2 mg/g

leaf nitrogen — a rough guide to compost/mulch value

Mycorrhiza obligate

Arbuscular (AM)

partners with arbuscular fungi — the commonest symbiosis; helps reach phosphorus & water, aiding drought resilience

Deep dive — what these mean

Seed mass 200 mg — average weight of one seed. Bigger seeds are easier to hand-collect & direct-sow; dust-fine seeds need surface-sowing.

Leaf nitrogen 26.2 mg/g — measured leaf N. Higher = richer prunings for compost/mulch (a measured stand-in for "dynamic accumulator" claims).

Mycorrhiza AM — the root–fungus partnership it forms (AM = most plants; ECM = most forest trees; ERM = heaths; NM = none). Trades sugars for water & nutrients via shared soil networks.

Measured traits from TRY + Werner et al. (N-fix), Fan et al. (roots) & FungalRoot — general guidance, not species-specific prescriptions.

More modules coming

Yellow-cedar Palicourea croceoides

Growing & care

Wildlife & pollinators

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