Description:

• Climbing, scrambling or erect shrubs or shrublets
• Leaves usually opposite, compound or reduced to one leaflet, digitately or pinnately 3- or more-foliolate
• Inflorescence consisting of a solitary flower or a few-flowered, simple or compound cyme, terminal on main and lateral branchlets, sometimes axillary as well
• Flowers often heterostylous, often sweetly scented
• Calyx tube campanulate; lobes 4-13, often long and subulate
• Corolla tube long and slender; lobes 4-11, imbricate, spreading abruptly; white or yellow, sometimes flushed with rose
• Stamens 2, arising ± midway or near top of tube, not exserted; filaments short
• Ovary 2-locular, with 2, rarely more, ovules in each locule, attached near base, usually only one ovule developing; style slender; stigma clavate or bilobed
• Fruit a 2-seeded berry, deeply bilobed, usually one lobe aborting
• Seeds without endosperm
• x = 13 (aneuploids, polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• Jasminum L.
  • Linnaeus: 7 (1753)
  • Harvey: 479 (1906/1907)
  • Verdoorn: 103 (1963)
  • Kupicha: 305 (1983)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species ± 450, Asia, Africa and Australia
• Southern Africa: Species 10, widespread excluding Lesotho