Hypericum pallens (Nomenclature)
Shrublet 0.05-0.25(0.4) m long, much branched, wiry to lignified, with branches slender, ascending to prostrate, diffuse; wholly glabrous; red or black glands present in leaves, flowers and sometimes stems. Stems 4-lined and ancipitous at first, eventually terete; cortex becoming bright red, sometimes with a few black glands; bark striate, reddish brown. Leaves paired, free, petiolate, with petiole c. 0.5-1 mm long; lamina (2.5-)4-14(-22) x (l-)2.5-7.5(-9) mm, oblong or elliptic (or rarely ovate) to obovate or oblanceolate, concolorous, glaucous beneath or on both sides, (sub?)coriaceous; apex rounded, margin plane to subrecurved, base cuneate to long- angustate or pseudopetiolate; venation: 0-2(-6) pairs of laterals, with tertiary reticulation visible in larger leaves; laminar glands sparse or absent, occasionally black; submarginal glands scattered, black; intramarginal glands dense. Inflorescence l(2-3)-flowered, terminal and often also 1-flowered axillary or terminating branches from up to c. 6 axils below, sometimes with up to 4 flowering branches from scattered lower nodes, the whole appearing racemiform; bracteoles narrowly oblong or absent; pedicels 5-9 mm long, slender, 'erect or resupinate'. Flowers 10-13(-15) mm in diam.; buds cylindric-ellipsoid, rounded, bright sealing-wax red (at least in prostrate form). Sepals green or pinkish red, (2-)3-5(-6) x 0.7-2.5 mm, free or almost so, not or slightly imbricate, equal, lanceolate or narrowly oblong or narrowly elliptic to linear, acute to rounded, chartaceous to submembranous, margin entire or irregularly glandular-denticulate; veins (3)5-7, not or only midrib prominent, often branched; laminar glands pale, punctiform or elongate, dense to sparse, often also 1-5 black, scattered; inframarginal glands pale, dense to sparse; marginal black glandular teeth 0-c. 10, elongate. Petals bright yellow, tinged bright red outside in bud, 6-12 x 2.5-4.5 mm, 2-2.5 x sepals, elliptic to oblong, obtuse with apiculus acute, lateral, with laminar glands scattered, punctiform or rarely striiform or linear, pale or sometimes some towards apex black or reddish. Stamens 20-30, longest 6-8 mm, 0.75-0.8 x petals; anther gland black. Ovary 2 x 1.5 mm, ovoid-ellipsoid to ellipsoid, acute to acuminate; styles 3-4 mm long, c. 2.5 x ovary, divergent. Capsule 4-5 x 3-4 mm, ovoid, subcoriaceous, surrounded by old petals, with valves longitudinally vittate, shorter than sepals. Seeds reddish brown, c. 1 mm long, ecarinate; testa linear-foveolate.
2n= 16 (Reynaud, 1973).
In fissures of hard limestone rocks; 50-1700 m.
Turkey (eastern Cilicia, Amanus), Syria (Latakia), Lebanon (north- west coastal plain and Lebanon range).
H. pallens is less woody and more procumbent to prostrate in habit than H. ternatum, and its area of distribution lies wholly to the east of that of the latter. The petals are red-tinged and the leaves (always paired) more variable - usually similar but sometimes broader or much larger ('var. maximum', from '4 hours south of Antioch', 11 June 1884, Post), but none of this variation warrants subdivision of the species. The inflorescence, although often racemiform, consists of 1(rarely 2-3)-flowered sylleptic branches and thus, as Hagemann (1989: 285) has pointed out, is essentially similar to the 1 -flowered synflorescence of e.g. H. revolutum (sect. 1 . Campylosporus).