Vines, suffruticose [woody]; latex milky. Stems twining or trailing, unarmed, glabrous or densely eglandular-pubescent. Leaves persistent, opposite, petiolate; stipular colleters interpetiolar and intrapetiolar; laminar colleters absent. Inflorescences axillary or terminal, cymose, often thyrsiform or subumbellate, pedunculate [sessile]. Flowers: calycine colleters present; corolla white or 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 basally connate, alternating with stamens. Fruits follicles, usually paired, erect or deflexed, reddish brown [brown], slender-cylindric [moniliform], surface striate, glabrous [pubescent]. Seeds narrowly oblong, flattened [terete], not winged, not beaked [short-beaked], comose, not arillate. x = 10.

Distribution

Introduced; Asia, introduced also in Mexico, West Indies, Central America, Europe, Pacific Islands, Australia.

Discussion

Species ca. 15 (1 in the flora).

Trachelospermum asiaticum (Siebold & Zuccarini) Nakai (Asiatic jasmine) is widely planted as a ground cover in the southern United States and has been collected from Alabama and Texas but does not appear to be naturalized. It can be distinguished from T. jasminoides by the growth form and by stamens that are well exserted from the corolla, in contrast to the included stamens of T. jasminoides.

Selected References

None.

Lower Taxa

Trachelospermum jasminoides