Plant Wiki

The open plant encyclopedia

Know any plant.
Grow it well.

Snap a photo or search by any name to see how to care for it, where it comes from, whether it's safe, and a 3D model you can turn.

  • 13,000+plants with full pages
  • 365,000+plant species worldwide
  • 220+countries covered

Common in

See all

The plants people record most in your country, and ones that grow there wild.

What do you want to do?

Popular plants

Browse all plants

See them in 3D

All plants in 3D

Browse plants

Filter by what you want to do, shape, origin, country, care and safety.

Plant Wiki › Browse plants

Orange cotoneaster

Cotoneaster franchetii

Also called Franchet's Cotoneaster, Cotoneaster, Franchet Cotoneaster, Grey Cotoneaster

Orange cotoneaster
Photo: A. Barra, CC BY 3.0
Family
Rosaceae (Rose family)
Grows as
Shrub
Native range
SE. Tibet to SC. China and N. Thailand
Climate
temperate

About

Cotoneaster franchetii (Franchet's cotoneaster or orange cotoneaster) is a species of Cotoneaster native to southwestern China, in the provinces of Guizhou, Sichuan, Tibet, and Yunnan, and also in adjacent northern Myanmar and northern Thailand.

It is an evergreen or semi-evergreen shrub growing to 3 metres (9.8 ft) tall. The leaves are oval-acute, 2–3.5 centimetres (0.79–1.38 in) long and 1–1.5 centimetres (0.39–0.59 in) broad, shiny green above, pubescent below with dense whitish to yellowish hairs. The flowers are produced in corymbs of 5–15 together, each flower 6–7 millimetres (0.24–0.28 in) diameter, with the five petals pink on the outer side, white on the inner side. The fruit is a red pome 6–9 millimetres (0.24–0.35 in) diameter; they are eaten by fruit-eating birds who disperse the seeds in their droppings.

How to grow it

Cotoneaster franchetii is a popular ornamental plant. It has escaped from cultivation and become locally naturalised in parts of the British Isles and the Pacific Northwest of North America, as well as Northern California.

Scientists at the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) in the UK carried out a study on the effectiveness of hedges for soaking up air pollution, comparing different types of shrubs including cotoneaster, hawthorn, and western red cedar. They found that bushy, hairy-leafed varieties of cotoneaster, such as this, are “super plants” that can help soak up air pollution. On roads with heavy traffic, the dense, hairy-leaved Cotoneaster franchetii was at least 20% more effective at soaking up air pollution than other shrubs often planted along roadsides.

Other Cotoneaster plants

Acuminate Cotoneaster · Peking cotoneaster · Creeping cotoneaster · Ambiguous Cotoneaster · Cranberry cotoneaster · Wall Cotoneaster · Hollyberry cotoneaster · Cotoneaster cambricus · Small Leaved Cotoneaster · Tibetan Cotoneaster · Late Cotoneaster · Bearberry cotoneaster

Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Cotoneaster franchetii by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts are shared under the same licence.

Life form, climate and native range: World Checklist of Vascular Plants, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (CC BY 3.0), reformatted; see Plants of the World Online.

Credits & terms

Identify a plant

Point at a leaf or flower and snap. One plant in frame works best.

Your photo
Starting camera…