Jasminum officinale

Jasminum officinale, also called common jasmine, summer jasmine, poet's jasmine, white jasmine, true jasmine, or jessamine, belongs to the olive family, Oleaceae. Its native range covers the Caucasus and parts of Asia, and it has become widely naturalized elsewhere. Gardeners in temperate regions prize it for the powerful fragrance its flowers release in summer, and it serves as the national flower of Pakistan.

Description

This plant is a vigorous, twining deciduous climber. Its leaves are sharply pointed and pinnate, each consisting of five to nine leaflets. In summer, it produces clusters of star-shaped, pure white blossoms that give off its characteristic heady scent. The Latin species name officinale means "useful."

Distribution

Its natural distribution includes the Caucasus, northern Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, the Himalayas, Tajikistan, India, Nepal, and western China (Guizhou, Sichuan, Xizang/Tibet, Yunnan). It is widely cultivated and has become naturalized in Spain, France, Italy, Portugal, Romania, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Serbia, Algeria, Florida, and the West Indies.

Chemical composition

Chemically, J. officinale contains alkaloids, coumarins, flavonoids, tannins, terpenoids, glycosides, emodine, leucoanthocyanins, steroids, anthocyanins, phlobatinins, essential oil, and saponins.

Garden history

The plant has been cultivated for so long that its exact origin—somewhere in Central Asia—remains uncertain. According to H.L. Li's The Garden Flowers of China, jasmines identifiable as J. officinale and J. sambac were listed among "foreign" plants in Chinese texts from the third century CE, and by the ninth century, Chinese records stated that J. officinale came from Byzantium. Its Chinese name, Yeh-hsi-ming, derives from Persian and Arabic. It likely entered European gardens through the Arab-Norman culture of Sicily, though garden historian John Harvey noted that little is known historically or archaeologically about pre-Norman Sicilian cultural life.

In the mid-14th century, Boccaccio's Decameron describes a walled garden bordered with roses and jasmine, and jasmine water appears in another tale. The plant became so thoroughly naturalized that Linnaeus believed it was native to Switzerland. It appears as a London garden plant in William Turner's Names of Herbes (1548). Double-flowered forms were treasured in the 16th and 17th centuries.