JASMINE, or JESSAMINE, a genus (Jasminum) of beautiful plants of the olive family, including many cultivated species and varieties. Most of these are shrubs with long slender branches bearing usually compound leaves and panicles of fragrant white or yellow flowers. They are natives principally of the East Indies. The common jasmine (J. offici nale) has become naturalized in the south of Europe, where it grows 8 or 10 feet tall, and is practically an evergreen. The oil of jasmine is obtained from J. olficinale and J. grandi forum, but it is usually imitated or adulterated. J. sambac also furnishes an oil in the East. A very common greenhouse species is J. hotline.
Several shrubs are called jasmines which are not closely related to the true jasmine. Thus the red jasmine of the West Indies (Plumeria rubra), the source of the perfume frangipanni, is of the oleander family; the Chilejasmine (Mandevillea suavolens), is an other fragrant species of the same family, widely cultivated, and others might be mentioned. Two of these outside °jasmines') are familiar in the United States, one of which is a native.
The Cape jasmine (Gardenia florida) is a Chinese shrub of the madder family, which found its way to England and America about the middle of the 18th century; a double flowered variety is sometimes grown in green houses and it grows out of doors along the southern seaboard, it being the special pride of Charleston, S. C., after one of whose citizens thegenus Gardenia was named by Linnaeus.
The native species is the Carolina or yellow jasmine (Gelsemium sempervirens), an exceed ingly_ odorous climbing plant of the family Loganiacm, common throughout the South At lantic States. It is a vine, whose blossoms grow in axillary racemes of from one to six vivid yellow tubular flowers; and °evening trumpet-flowero is a common name. °Early laden, indeed, is the warm air of spring with its delicious perfume. . . . Through woods and thickets it wends its way vigorously and gleams as brightly as does later the Cherokee rose: It is one of the joys of • the season?) The roots are regarded by the country possessed of medical virtues.