“Effective” upper-mass limit at solar metallicity. The effective limit drops with time, as four different initial masses (250, 500, 750, 1000 M_⊙) – represented by the four different lines – “converge” to very similar values. The figure also highlights that it is not possible to infer the value of the initial stellar upper-mass limit from present-day observations (unless one has the exact theoretical knowledge of the mass-loss history available).