(L.) Banfi
Description
Chrysojasminum fruticans, formerly placed in Jasminum and long known as Jasminum fruticans, is a small evergreen to semi-evergreen shrub of the family Oleaceae. The bulk of its GBIF records lie around the Mediterranean basin and into Western Asia, encompassing France, Spain, Portugal, Italy, the Balkans, Turkey, the Caucasus and North Africa, where it is a classic component of dry maquis and garrigue. Its appearance in the western Himalaya, as in the Nepalese collection from Parela at about 3,000 m in July, represents the eastern extremity of an essentially Irano-Turanian to Mediterranean distribution, where it occupies sunny, rocky, calcareous slopes, open scrub and woodland margins.
The plant forms a much-branched shrub up to about 1–2 m with slender, green, angular twigs. The leaves are alternate and pinnately compound, usually trifoliolate or with up to five small obovate to oblong leaflets, glabrous and somewhat leathery, the foliage persisting through mild winters. The flowers are borne in small terminal cymes of a few blooms; the corolla is salverform with a slender tube expanding into five spreading lobes and is a distinctive bright yellow, only faintly scented in contrast to the white-flowered jasmines. The fruit is a small, shining, globose berry that ripens from green to black.
The transfer of this and allied yellow-flowered jasmines to the segregate genus Chrysojasminum reflects molecular phylogenetic evidence that the yellow jasmines form a distinct lineage within tribe Jasmineae, separate from the white-flowered Jasminum sensu stricto. Ecologically it is drought-adapted and characteristic of thermophilous, calcicolous communities, valued in horticulture as a hardy ornamental. Its scattered, peripheral Himalayan occurrence is biogeographically notable, illustrating the westerly Mediterranean affinities present in the dry inner valleys of the Himalaya.
Author: (L.) Banfi · Sources: POWO (Kew), GBIF, Flora Europaea Vol. 3, Flora of Pakistan, Green: A Revision of Jasminum (Oleaceae), Flora Iberica