Hypericum lissophloeus (Nomenclature)
Shrub to 4 m tall, erect, slender, sparsely branched, forming dense clumps sometimes with prop-roots, with branches suberect to ascending. Stems silvery-brown (gun-metal colour), light reddish brown beneath, 4- lined, ancipitous and glaucous when young, soon 4-angled, eventually terete; cortex exfoliating in large thin curled plates; bark chestnut-brown, smooth, thin, polished, becoming metallic-silvery. Leaves sessile, (9-) 12- 17 x 0.5-0.75 mm, with those in axillary clusters almost as long, linear-subulate to acicular, incurved, with revolute margin not wholly obscuring papillose lower surface, glaucous when young, subcoriaceous, deciduous at basal articulation, apex obtuse to rounded, base not or scarcely expanded; midrib unbranched; laminar glands numerous, especially visible beneath, marginal glands dense. Inflorescence 1-3-flowered, usually with paired flowers or triads from up to 9 nodes below, the whole very narrowly cylindric; pedicels 2-3 mm long; bracts foliar. Flowers c. 20 mm in diam.; buds ovoid, acute. Sepals 5, 7-8 x 0.5-0.75 mm, subequal, linear-subulate, acute, 1-veined, deciduous. Petals 5, bright yellow, spreading?, 10-12 x 5-6 mm, obovate-spathulate, with apiculus lateral, acute, rather short. Stamens 170-221, longest 8-9 mm, 0.75-0.8 x petals. Ovary 3(4)-merous, c. 3.5 x 1.2 mm, narrowly ellipsoid, placentation parietal; styles 3(4), c. 5 mm long, c. 1.4 x ovary, separating in fruit. Capsule 6-7 x 2.5-3.5 mm, narrowly ovoid to ellipsoid, shorter than sepals, thinly coriaceous. Seeds tan to dark brown, 1-1.6 mm long, shallowly carinate; testa very coarsely reticulate-sulcate.
2n = 18, n = 9 (Lewis, Stripling & Ross, 1962).
In sandy soil on shores of sinkhole ponds and lakes, often in water to 1.5 m deep; lowland.
U.S.A. (NW Florida, Bay and Washington Counties only).
As Adams (1962) remarked, H. lissophloeus is distinguished from the H. fasciculatum complex (Spp. 12-14) by many features, including the smooth polished metallic bark (which exfoliates like a species of Betula), the slender, wand-like, lax or drooping younger stems, the large seeds with furrowed testa, and the glaucous young shoots; and it sometimes grows in association with l0b. H. nitidum subsp. nitidum and 13. H. fasciculatum, remaining distinct from both. Adams failed to mention the large capsules and wholly 1-3-flowered lateral inflorescence-branches, which help to remove H. lissophloeus from both the H. nitidum and the H. fasciculatum groups, despite the linear-subulate leaves. Indeed, the capsules are nearer in form to those of H. prolificum than to those of H. fasciculatum and even more different from the narrow capsules of the H. nitidum group. It seems most appropriate, therefore, to regard H. lissophloeus as an early development of the evolutionary line from H. prolificum to H. fasciculatum, after the departure of the H. nitidum complex.