Sarothra Linnaeus.

[Trees or] shrubs, subshrubs, or perennial herbs, glabrous or with simple hairs, with translucent ("pale") and often opaque, black or reddish ("dark") glands, laminar (immersed and sometimes abaxial) and marginal or intramarginal. Leaves opposite [or whorled], sessile or short petiolate, venation pinnate to palmate [or rarely dichotomous], margin entire or gland-fringed. Inflorescence cymose. Flowers bisexual, homostylous [or heterostylous], stellate or cupped. Sepals 5 and quincuncial or rarely 4 and decussate, unequal or equal, free or partly united. Petals (4 or)5, contorted, golden to lemon yellow [or rarely white], abaxially sometimes tinged or veined red, persistent or deciduous after anthesis, usually asymmetric. Stamens in [4 or]5 fascicles, free and antipetalous, or some united to form apparently 4 or 3 fascicles with compound fascicle(s) antisepalous, or irregular and apparently not fasciculate, persistent or deciduous, each single fascicle with up to 70[-120] stamens; filaments slender, free from nearly base [or to 2/3 united] or apparently completely free; anthers small, dorsifixed or ± basifixed, dehiscing longitudinally, with gland on connective; sterile fascicles (fasciclodes) absent [very rare]. Ovary 3-5-loculed with axile placentae or ± completely 1-loculed with (2 or)3[-5] parietal placentae, each placenta with [2 or] few to many ovules; styles (2 or)3-5, free or partly to completely united, ± slender; stigmas small or ± capitate. Fruit a septicidal capsule or rarely ± indehiscent, valves often with oil-containing vittae or vesicles. Seeds small, often carinate or narrowly unilaterally winged; testa variously sculptured, not arillate [very rarely carunculate]; embryo slender, straight, with distinct slender cotyledons.

Species of Hypericum are distributed nearly throughout China but are most abundant in the southwest and rare in Xinjiang.

In addition, Hypericum prolificum Linnaeus, a North American species in H. sect. Myriandra (Spach) R. Keller, has been recorded (as H. densiflorum Pursh) from Jiangxi (Lushan).

About 460 species: almost cosmopolitan except for arctic and desert areas and most of the lowland tropics; 64 species (33 endemic) in China.

(Authors: Li Xiwen (李锡文 Li Hsi-wen); Norman K. B. Robson)