L.
Description
Jasminum officinale, the common or poet's jasmine, is native to the Caucasus, Central Asia and the Himalaya through Afghanistan, Pakistan, N India, Nepal and SW China, but is so widely cultivated that GBIF's 3,200-plus records span France, Britain, Spain, Italy, the United States, Australia and beyond, reflecting naturalisation far outside its native range. In its Himalayan homeland it is a plant of open forest, scrub, thickets and rocky slopes. The photographed material from Garhwal in the Indian Himalaya, at Meggu Kichatti (3,100 m) and Bebra (2,400 m) in June, illustrates its occurrence on warm temperate to subalpine slopes between roughly 1,500 and 3,100 m.
It is a deciduous or semi-evergreen scrambling shrub with slender, angular, twining green branches. The leaves are opposite and imparipinnate, with usually five to nine ovate-lanceolate, acuminate leaflets, the terminal leaflet longer and stalked. The fragrant flowers are borne in terminal and axillary cymes; each has a slender corolla tube expanding into four to five spreading white lobes, often flushed pink in bud. The fruit is a black, two-lobed berry, though fruiting is uncommon in cultivated clones.
The intense evening fragrance, produced by volatile esters and indole, attracts moths and other long-tongued nocturnal pollinators and underlies the long economic history of the species in the perfume and tea-scenting industries. Numerous cultivars and forms exist, including the hardy var. affine. As an extensively cultivated and locally naturalising species it is of no conservation concern, and indeed can behave as a garden escape in mild-climate regions worldwide.
Author: L. · Sources: POWO (Kew), Flora of Pakistan, GBIF, Flora of China Vol. 15, Green: A Revision of the Genus Jasminum (Kew Bulletin)