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Gymnosporia
Also called Spikethorns
Gymnosporia, known as spike thorns, is a genus of Old World shrubs and small trees in the Celastraceae family, with a few low sub-shrubs, found across Africa, Asia and parts of Australia. Most are grown as hardy garden shrubs or hedges in warm, dry climates, and they are dioecious, so male and female flowers grow on separate plants.
Gymnosporia is an Old World genus of plants, that comprise suffrutices, shrubs and trees. It was formerly considered congeneric with Maytenus, but more recent investigations separated it based on the presence of achyblasts (truncated branchlets) and spines, alternate leaves or fascicles of leaves, an inflorescence that forms a dichasium, mostly unisexual flowers, and fruit forming a dehiscent capsule, with an aril on the seed. It is dioecious, with male and female flowers on separate plants.
The genus occurs in all of Africa, Madagascar and adjacent islands, southern Spain, the Middle East, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Vietnam, southern China, Taiwan, the Ryukyu Islands, Malesia, Micronesia, and in Queensland, Australia. In the Afrotropical realm the two main centers of diversity are in the south and the northeast.
Gymnosporia addat · Gymnosporia arbutifolia · Willow Spike Thorn · Camassiwood · Gymnosporia cassinoides · Dhofar Spikethorn · Gymnosporia harenensis · Angle Stem Spikethorn · Forest Maytenus · Gymnosporia pertinax · Maytenus senegalensis · Gymnosporia stylosa
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Gymnosporia by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts and the care summary drawn from them are shared under the same licence.
The care summary was written by AI (Claude, Anthropic) from the sources on this page, with general growing knowledge where they are silent. Check before relying on it.
