Hypericum stellatum N. Robson

An evergreen or semi-evergreen shrub up to 3 or 4 ft high, with arching branches; branchlets two- or four-angled near the ends. Leaves shortly stalked, ovate to lanceolate or oblong-lanceolate, 3⁄4 to 11⁄2 in. long, acute or obtuse and mucronate at the apex, pale but not glaucous beneath. Flowers bright golden yellow, 1 to 13⁄4 in. across, borne in corymbose clusters. Petals obovate, about twice as long as wide, with an acute apiculus at one side near the apex. Sepals linear-lanceolate, spreading in the bud-stage and after flowering. Stamens in five bundles, about two-thirds as long as the petals. Styles slightly longer than the ovary to one and a half times as long.

Native of Yunnan, W. Szechwan, and bordering parts of S.E. Tibet; introduced to cultivation about 1893 by means of seeds sent by one of the French missionaries to Maurice de Vilmorin, in whose collection at Les Barres it first flowered in 1897. It was identified there by Bois as H. lysimachioides Wall, ex Dyer, and under this name it was introduced to Kew in 1904. Later it was also grown as H. dyeri, which is simply a renaming of H. lysimachioides Dyer. Dr Robson, however, has recently pointed out this Chinese hypericum differs from the W. Himalayan H. dyeri in several respects and has described it as a new species – H. stellatum (Journ. R.H.S., Vol. 95 (1970), p. 493).

H. dyeri Rehd. H. lysimachioides Wall, ex Dyer, not Boiss. & Noë – This species, a native of W. Himalaya as far east as Nepal, is perhaps not in cultivation. From H. stellatum (see above) it differs, according to Dr Robson, in the following particulars: leaves whitish beneath, with the reticulations fairly conspicuous; petals narrower (about three times as long as wide); ovary subglobose (not ovoid); styles longer, one and a half to twice as long as ovary.