Hypericum xylosteifolium (Nomenclature)
Shrub up to 1.5 m tall, suckering and thicket-forming, deciduous, with branches erect to spreading. Stems green to pinkish, 4-lined and ancipitous when young, soon 2-lined, eventually terete; internodes 10-40 mm long, shorter than leaves; bark fissuring. Leaves petiolate, with petiole 4-10 mm long; lamina (15-)20-73 x 8-26 mm, oblong or elliptic to lanceolate or oblong-ovate, rounded or truncate to apiculate or obtuse, margin plane, base rounded to broadly cuneate, paler beneath, not glaucous, chartaceous; venation: (3)4-6 pairs of ascending main lateral veins, not always distinct from the midrib branches, with tertiary reticulation dense, conspicuous; laminar glands small; intramarginal glands dense. Inflorescence 1-7(-c. 25)-flowered, terminal, broadly pyramidal to subcorymbiform, from 1-2(3) nodes, sometimes with 1-2 pairs of subsidiary branches; pedicels 4-7(-10) mm long; bracts foliar or reduced or linear, and then sometimes with sessile yellowish marginal glands, deciduous. Flowers 15-30 mm in diam., stellate; buds ellipsoid, rounded. Sepals 4.5-12 x 1.3-2.5 mm, open (not imbricate), subequal to unequal, very narrowly oblong or narrowly elliptic to oblanceolate-spathulate, acute, margin entire or with sessile to shortly stipitate yellowish flat-topped glands; (3)5-7-veined reticulately branched, midrib distinct; laminar glands linear to punctiform. Petals golden yellow, not tinged red, spreading, 8-15 x 1.5-4.5 mm, c. 1.3-2 x sepals, narrowly oblanceolate to narrowly obovate, without apiculus, margin with spaced sessile dark red glands. Stamen fascicles each with 10-11 stamens, longest (8-)12- 15 mm long, about equalling petals; anthers pale orange. Ovary 2.5-3.5 x 2.3 mm, ovoid-conic to subglobose; styles 7-9 mm long, 2.5-3 x ovary, free, erect to suberect, narrowly divergent in upper 1/3. Capsule 5.7 x 5.7 mm, subglobose to globose. Seeds pale brown, c. 0-7 mm long, cylindric, not carinate, shallowly linear-foveolate.
2n = 40.
Deciduous forest, shady banks and cliffs, 0-670 m.
Turkey (Giresun, Trabzon, Rize, Çoruh), U.S.S.R. (Georgia).
H. xylosteifolium, unlike H. hircinum, usually has leaves broadest at or near the middle, but it has smaller flowers, narrower sepals and persistent petals and stamens. It forms small thickets with spreading leafy branches and relatively inconspicuous flowers. There is some evidence to suggest that it flowers more freely in the (wetter) west of Britain than in the (drier) east. None of the described varieties of H. xylosteifolium appear to be distinct. Those of Ledebour merely reflect variation in luxuriance of growth. On the other hand, the forms with (respectively) larger entire sepals (and bracts) and smaller gland-fringed sepals represent the extremes of a west-east cline. All the Georgian plants that I have seen have gland-fringed sepals and bracts, whereas in most of the Turkish specimens they are entire. There is, however, an area in eastern Turkey where there occur transitional forms that prevent the recognition of two varieties. The Tournefort specimen (type collection) at BM is of this intermediate form, having sepals entire or with one or two marginal glands.