(L.) Banfi
Description
Chrysojasminum humile, the yellow Italian jasmine, is a shrub native from the Mediterranean and Southwest Asia eastward through the Himalaya into China, with GBIF recording about 1850 occurrences and many cultivated or naturalised collections worldwide. In its Asian range it grows on open hillsides, forest edges, dry rocky slopes and scrub on calcareous or well-drained soils. The illustrated material comes from Bhutan at Paro near 2400 m, flowering in May, and from Nepal above Meta-Khola at about 1600 m in April; across the Himalaya the species typically occupies the warm-temperate zone between roughly 1200 and 2800 m.
The plant is an erect or somewhat sprawling, evergreen to semi-evergreen shrub with green, angled, glabrous twigs. The leaves are alternate and pinnately compound with three to seven (sometimes more) leaflets, the terminal leaflet largest, elliptic to ovate, glabrous and shining. The flowers are borne in terminal cymes and are bright yellow, fragrant, with a slender corolla tube expanding into five spreading lobes; the calyx is small with short teeth. The fruit is a shining black, ellipsoid to globose berry, two-lobed when both carpels develop.
Long treated within Jasminum, this species and its allies were segregated into Chrysojasminum on molecular and morphological grounds, the yellow-flowered jasmines forming a distinct lineage within Oleaceae. Highly variable, it encompasses numerous named forms and is much grown as an ornamental, accounting for its scattered records far outside the native range. Widespread and adaptable, it is of no conservation concern, and its nectar-rich flowers attract bees and butterflies.
Author: (L.) Banfi · Sources: POWO (Kew), GBIF, Flora of China, Flora of Bhutan, Oleaceae revision (Green)