1. Jasminum nudiflorum Lindl. (winter jasmine)
Map 2101
Plants shrubs,
0.4–1.5 m tall (but the spreading stems up to 5.0 m long), with perfect
flowers. Main stems numerous, intricately branched, mostly loosely ascending to
spreading or arched, sometimes rooting at the tip, rarely climbing on other
vegetation, the bark tending to remain dark green, but eventually turning
purplish brown to dark brown or brown with age, smooth or with a few,
irregular, longitudinal furrows. Twigs relatively slender, dark green or
occasionally purplish- or brownish-tinged, glabrous, 4-angled in cross-section
(usually with 4 slender ridges), with the leaf scars not or only slightly
raised and the lenticels inconspicuous, small, and not raised. Terminal buds
narrowly ovoid to narrowly ellipsoid, with several, overlapping, sharply
pointed scales, the axillary buds similar to the terminal ones. Leaves
opposite, short-petiolate to nearly sessile. Leaf blades mostly ternately
compound (simple leaves often present at the bases of branchlets), 0.7–3.0 cm
long, 0.4–1.5 cm wide, the blade or leaflets ovate to oblong-obovate or less
commonly nearly circular, angled or short-tapered at the blunt tip (sometimes
with an abrupt, minute, sharp point at the very tip), angled at the base, the
margins entire but usually minutely hairy, the upper surface dark green,
glabrous, and shiny, the undersurface sometimes slightly lighter green and
glabrous. Inflorescences axillary, of solitary flowers, developing before the leaves,
each usually with 1 or few, small, sepaloid bract(s), the flowers with slender
stalks 2–6 mm long, not fragrant. Calyces deeply 5- or 6-lobed, 4–6 mm long,
the lobes narrowly lanceolate to narrowly oblong-lanceolate, often strongly
reddish-tinged. Corollas 5- or 6-lobed less than 1/2 way to the base, more or
less trumpet-shaped (the tube often slightly curved), the lobes elliptic to
oblong-elliptic or oblong-obovate, yellow (the outer surface and the tube
frequently reddish-tinged). Style 2–5 mm long, either with a solitary, capitate
stigma or more commonly with a pair of ascending branches at the tip. Fruits
berries, 5–7 mm long, ellipsoid to ovoid, olive green, turning blackish with
age, glabrous. 2n=26, 52 (possibly also 2n=29, 34, 48). February–March.
Introduced,
known thus far from a single site in Taney County (native of Asia, introduced
uncommonly and sporadically in the eastern half of the U.S.). Glades; also old
homesites.
Jasminum
nudiflorum is most often
grown as a mounding ground cover, but sometimes is trained on trellises or
staked into an upright form. The flowers appear in the late winter, when few
other plants are flowering. It is also used in bonsai, where it is trained into
a small treeform plant with weeping branches. In Missouri it is not cultivated
as frequently as it is farther south, as it is only semihardy from USDA
Hardiness Zone 5 northward (for a chart of hardiness zones, see the
introductory section on climate of Missouri in Volume 1 of the present work
[Yatskievych, 1999]). The first Missouri record was collected in 2004 by
Michael Skinner of the Missouri Department of Conservation at a site near
Branson where plants apparently had escaped from a planting at an old homesite
and colonized an adjacent dolomite glade.
Some botanists
segregate a dwarfed, prostrate variant of the species that occurs at high
elevations in southwestern China as var. pulvinatum (W.W. Sm.) Kobuski.