欧瑞香属 ou rui xiang shu

Authors: Yinzheng Wang, Lorin I. Nevling & Michael G. Gilbert

Ligia Fasano.

Herbs annual, subshrubs, or shrubs; upper parts much branched. Branchlets usually tuberculate. Leaves alternate, crowded when young; petiole short or absent; leaf blade herbaceous or leathery. Inflorescence terminal or axillary, 1-flowered or fasciculate, with or without involucre. Flowers bisexual or unisexual, 4-merous. Calyx tube persistent, rarely deciduous, yellow to yellow-green, cylindric, funnel-shaped, or urceolate, contracted at apex of ovary; lobes 4. Petaloid appendages absent. Stamens twice as many as calyx lobes, in two series, included or upper slightly exserted from throat. Disk tiny or absent. Ovary 1-loculed; style terminal or excentric, short; stigma capitate or appressed globose, papillose. Fruit indehiscent, pericarp membranous.

Between 20 and 30 species: N Africa, C and SW Asia, C, E, and S Europe; naturalized in S Australia and North America; one species in China.

Lower Taxon

• Thymelaea passerina (Linnaeus) Cosson & Germain