九里香属 jiu li xiang shu

Authors: Prof. Dianxiang Zhang & Thomas G. Hartley

Bergera J. Koenig; Camunium Adanson.

Shrubs or trees, unarmed, without rust-colored villosulous indumentum on terminal and axillary bud or young inflorescences. Leaves alternate, odd-pinnate (occasional leaves even-pinnate or 1-foliolate). Inflorescences terminal or terminal and axillary, paniculate or reduced to cymes or few to several-flowered racemes. Flowers bisexual, ellipsoid to obovoid, or narrowly so or subcylindric in bud. Sepals 4 or 5, connate at base or to ± half their length. Petals 4 or 5, imbricate in bud. Stamens (5-)8 or 10, distinct, alternately unequal in length; filaments linear or sublinear, ± straight. Disk annular, pulvinate, or columnar. Gynoecium 2-5-loculed, syncarpous; radial walls of locules straight; ovules 1 or 2 per locule; style 3-7 × as long as ovary, deciduous in fruit or sometimes basal portion persistent. Fruit a berry, with mucilaginous pulp and without pulp vesicles; endocarp fleshy. Seeds with membranous or fleshy seed coat; endosperm lacking; embryo straight; cotyledons elliptic, plano-convex, neither convolute nor folded; hypocotyl partly included between cotyledons.

About 12 species: E, S, and SE Asia, Australia, SW Pacific islands; nine species (five endemic) in China.

In a cladistic analysis of selected species of subfamily Aurantioideae based on plastid DNA sequences and phytochemical features, R. Samuel et al. (Pl. Biol. 3: 77-87. 2001) proposed that Murraya is heterogeneous and that plants of M. sect. Bergera (J. Koenig ex Linnaeus) But & Y. C. Kong (including species 4-9 in the present enumeration) are generically distinct from those of M. sect. Murraya. However, as they pointed out, it is not clear yet whether Bergera is distinct from Clausena.