Vines, suffruticose; latex milky. Stems twining, unarmed, glabrous or sparsely eglandular-pubescent. Leaves deciduous, opposite, petiolate; stipular colleters interpetiolar and intrapetiolar; laminar colleters absent. Inflorescences axillary, thyrsiform, pedunculate. Flowers: calycine colleters present; corolla pale yellow, salverform, aestivation dextrorse; corolline corona absent; androecium and gynoecium not united into a gynostegium; stamens inserted near top of corolla tube; anthers connivent, adherent to stigma, connectives enlarged, 2-lobed, locules 4; pollen free, not massed into pollinia, translators absent; nectaries 5, distinct or connate. Fruits follicles, usually paired, erect or pendulous, brown, slender, terete, surface smooth, glabrous. Seeds linear, flattened, not winged, not beaked, comose, not arillate.

Distribution

c, e United States.

Discussion

Species 1.

Pichon erected Thyrsanthella to accommodate a single species that has been treated tradition­ally as the sole native North American representative of Trachelospermum, a genus otherwise restricted to southeastern Asia. Recent molecular work (T. Livshultz et al. 2007) has supported the recognition of Thyrsanthella as distinct from Trachelospermum.

Selected References

None.

Lower Taxa

Thyrsanthella difformis