jasmine

jasmine

1. any oleaceous shrub or climbing plant of the tropical and subtropical genus Jasminum, esp J. officinalis: widely cultivated for their white, yellow, or red fragrant flowers, which are used in making perfume and in flavouring tea

2. any of several other shrubs with fragrant flowers, such as the Cape jasmine, yellow jasmine, and frangipani (red jasmine)

3. a light to moderate yellow colour

Collins Discovery Encyclopedia, 1st edition © HarperCollins Publishers 2005

jasmine

jasmine

Super-fragrant white flowers are used in tea and sweet dishes. Oval, shiny leaves and tubular, waxy-white flowers. Calming, soothing scent, aphrodisiac, antiseptic, anti-inflammatory, used in China for hepatitis, lowers serum progesterone levels and balance hormones in women. NOTE: “False Jasmine” is in a different species with yellow flowers and is toxic It’s also called jessamine, yellow jessamine, jasmine, Carolina jasmine, evening trumpetflower, gelsemium.

Edible Plant Guide © 2012 Markus Rothkranz

jasmine

(also rose) of Indonesia. [Flower Symbolism: WB, 7: 264]

See: Flower Or Plant, National

---

jasmine

traditional representation of a pleasant nature. [Flower Symbolism: Flora Symbolica, 175]

See: Goodnaturedness

Allusions—Cultural, Literary, Biblical, and Historical: A Thematic Dictionary. Copyright 2008 The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved.

The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or ideologically biased.

Jasmine

 

in Russian, the name for two genera of ornamental plants.

(1) Garden jasmine, or mock orange (Philadelphus), is a genus of deciduous shrub of the hydrangea family. The leaves are serrate and opposite, ranging from oviform to lanceolate. The flowers have four white or cream petals and grow in racemes. The fruit is a capsule.

Mock orange grows in the underbrush of broad-leaved and mixed broad-leaved and conifer forests and on slopes amid other bushes. Its straight thick shoots are used for pipe stems— chubuki—so the plant is sometimes called chubushnik. There are 71 species in Europe, Asia, and North America and three in the USSR: Caucasian mock orange (P. caucasicus), which grows in the Caucasus; thinleaf mock orange (P. tenuifolius); and Schrenk mock orange (P. schrenkii), found in the Far East. Several other species are cultivated.

(2) True jasmine (Jasminum) is a genus of deciduous or evergreen shrub or vine of the family Oleaceae. The leaves are imparipinnate, ternate, or, less frequently, simple. The blossoms are white, yellow, or reddish, with long narrow trumpets and four to six (or 12) lobes. They are aromatic and appear singly, in corymbs, or in cymes. Jasminum includes approximately 200 species, primarily found in the tropics and subtropics of Asia, Africa, and South America. In the USSR there are three species: common, or poet’s, jasmine (J. officinale), which grows in the Caucasus; J. revolutum, found on the Darvaz Ridge; and J. fruticans, which grows in the Crimea and Caucasus. Essential oil is obtained from the blossoms of the Himalaya evergreen grandiflora jasmine (J. grandiflorum) and from sweet jasmine (J. odortissimum), grown on the island of Madeira. The evergreen vine Arabian jasmine (J. sambac) is a popular house plant.

REFERENCE

Derev’ia i kustarniki SSSR, vols. 3, 5. Moscow-Leningrad, 1954–60.

T. G. LEONOVA

The Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 3rd Edition (1970-1979). © 2010 The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved.