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Hypericum

(Genus)

[Trees or] shrubs, subshrubs, or perennial herbs, glabrous or with simple hairs, with translucent ("pale") and often opaque, black or reddish ("dark") glands, laminar (immersed and sometimes abaxial) and marginal or intramarginal. Leaves opposite [or whorled], sessile or short petiolate, venation pinnate to palmate [or rarely dichotomous], margin entire or gland-fringed. Inflorescence cymose. Flowers bisexual, homostylous [or heterostylous], stellate or cupped. Sepals 5 and quincuncial or rarely 4 and decussate, unequal or equal, free or partly united. Petals (4 or) 5, contorted, golden to lemon yellow [or rarely white], abaxially sometimes tinged or veined red, persistent or deciduous after anthesis,usually asymmetric. Stamens in [4 or]5 fascicles, free and antipetalous, or some united to form apparently 4 or 3 fascicles with compound fascicle(s) antisepalous, or irregular and apparently not fasciculate, persistent or deciduous, each single fascicle with up to 70[-120] stamens; filaments slender, free from nearly base [or to 2/3 united] or apparently completely free; anthers small, dorsifixed or ± basifixed, dehiscing longitudinally, with gland on connective; sterile fascicles (fasciclodes) absent [very rare]. Ovary 3-5-loculed with axile placentae or ± completely 1-loculed with (2 or) 3[-5] parietal placentae, each placenta with [2 or] few to many ovules; styles (2 or) 3-5, free or partly to completely united, ± slender; stigmas small or ± capitate. Fruit a septicidal capsule or rarely ± indehiscent, valves often with oil-containing vittae or vesicles. Seeds small, often carinate or narrowly unilaterally winged; testa variously sculptured, not arillate [very rarely carunculate]; embryo slender, straight, with distinct slender cotyledons.

About 460 species: almost cosmopolitan except for arctic and desert areas and most of the lowland tropics; 64 species (33 endemic) in China.[1]

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Taxonomy

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The Genus Hypericum is further organized into finer groupings including: