''Buddleja davidii'' (spelling variant ''Buddleia davidii''), also called summer lilac, butterfly-bush, or orange eye, is a
species
In biology, a species is the basic unit of Taxonomy (biology), classification and a taxonomic rank of an organism, as well as a unit of biodiversity. A species is often defined as the largest group of organisms in which any two individuals of ...
of flowering plant in the
family
Family (from la, familia) is a group of people related either by consanguinity (by recognized birth) or affinity (by marriage or other relationship). The purpose of the family is to maintain the well-being of its members and of society. Ideal ...
Scrophulariaceae
The Scrophulariaceae are a family of flowering plants, commonly known as the figwort family. The plants are annual and perennial herbs, as well as shrubs. Flowers have bilateral (zygomorphic) or rarely radial ( actinomorphic) symmetry. The Sc ...
,
native
Native may refer to:
People
* Jus soli, citizenship by right of birth
* Indigenous peoples, peoples with a set of specific rights based on their historical ties to a particular territory
** Native Americans (disambiguation)
In arts and entertai ...
to Sichuan and Hubei provinces in central China, and also Japan. It is widely used as an
ornamental plant
Ornamental plants or garden plants are plants that are primarily grown for their beauty but also for qualities such as scent or how they shape physical space. Many flowering plants and garden varieties tend to be specially bred cultivars that ...
, and many named varieties are in cultivation. The genus was named ''Buddleja'' after Reverend
Adam Buddle, an English botanist. The species name ''davidii'' honors the French missionary and explorer in China, Father
Armand David, who was the first European to report the shrub. It was found near
Ichang by Dr
Augustine Henry
Augustine Henry (2 July 1857 – 23 March 1930) was a British-born Irish plantsman and sinologist. He is best known for sending over 15,000 dry specimens and seeds and 500 plant samples to Kew Gardens in the United Kingdom. By 1930, he was a re ...
about 1887 and sent to St Petersburg. Another botanist-missionary in China,
Jean-André Soulié, sent seed to the French nursery
Vilmorin
Vilmorin is a French seed producer. The company has a long history in France, where it was family-controlled for almost two centuries, and today exists as a publicly traded company owned principally by agro-industrial cooperative Groupe Limagra ...
, and ''B. davidii'' entered commerce in the 1890s.
''B. davidii'' was accorded the
RHS Award of Merit (AM) in 1898, and the
Award of Garden Merit
The Award of Garden Merit (AGM) is a long-established annual award for plants by the British Royal Horticultural Society (RHS). It is based on assessment of the plants' performance under UK growing conditions.
History
The Award of Garden Merit ...
(AGM) in 1941.
[Hillier & Sons. (1990). ''Hillier's Manual of Trees & Shrubs, 5th ed.''. p. 47. David & Charles, Newton Abbot. ]
Description
''Buddleja davidii'' is a vigorous shrub with an arching habit, growing to in height. The pale brown bark becomes deeply fissured with age. The branches are quadrangular in section, the younger shoots covered in a dense
indumentum
In biology, an indumentum (Latin, literally: "garment") is a covering of trichomes (fine "hairs") on a plant Davis, Peter Hadland and Heywood, Vernon Hilton (1963) ''Principles of angiosperm taxonomy'' Van Nostrandpage, Princeton, New Jersey, pa ...
. The opposite
lanceolate
The following is a list of terms which are used to describe leaf morphology in the description and taxonomy of plants. Leaves may be simple (a single leaf blade or lamina) or compound (with several leaflets). The edge of the leaf may be regular ...
leaves are long,
tomentose
Trichomes (); ) are fine outgrowths or appendages on plants, algae, lichens, and certain protists. They are of diverse structure and function. Examples are hairs, glandular hairs, scales, and papillae. A covering of any kind of hair on a plant ...
beneath when young. The honey-scented lilac to purple
inflorescence
An inflorescence is a group or cluster of flowers arranged on a stem that is composed of a main branch or a complicated arrangement of branches. Morphologically, it is the modified part of the shoot of seed plants where flowers are formed o ...
s are terminal
panicle
A panicle is a much-branched inflorescence. (softcover ). Some authors distinguish it from a compound spike inflorescence, by requiring that the flowers (and fruit) be pedicellate (having a single stem per flower). The branches of a panicle are of ...
s, < long.
[Stuart, D. (2006). ''Buddlejas''. pp 30–34. RHS Plant Collector Series, Timber Press, Oregon. ] Flowers are
perfect (having both male and female parts), hence are
hermaphrodite
In reproductive biology, a hermaphrodite () is an organism that has both kinds of reproductive organs and can produce both gametes associated with male and female sexes.
Many taxonomic groups of animals (mostly invertebrates) do not have s ...
rather than
monoecious
Monoecy (; adj. monoecious ) is a sexual system in seed plants where separate male and female cones or flowers are present on the same plant. It is a monomorphic sexual system alongside gynomonoecy, andromonoecy and trimonoecy.
Monoecy is con ...
(separate male and female flowers on the same plant) as is often incorrectly stated.
Ploidy
Ploidy () is the number of complete sets of chromosomes in a cell, and hence the number of possible alleles for autosomal and pseudoautosomal genes. Sets of chromosomes refer to the number of maternal and paternal chromosome copies, respective ...
2''n'' = 76 (tetraploid).
''Buddleja davidii'', after Leeuwenberg
In his 1979 revision of the taxonomy of the African and Asiatic species of ''Buddleja'', the Dutch botanist
Anthonius Leeuwenberg sank the six varieties of the species as synonyms of the type, considering them to be within the natural variation of a species, and unworthy of varietal recognition.
[Leeuwenberg, A. J. M. (1979) ''The Loganiaceae of Africa XVIII Buddleja L. II, Revision of the African & Asiatic species''. H. Veenman & Zonen B. V., Wageningen, Nederland.] It was Leeuwenberg's taxonomy which was adopted in the ''Flora of China''
[Li, P-T. & Leeuwenberg, A. J. M. (1996). Loganiaceae, in Wu, Z. & Raven, P. (eds) ''Flora of China'', Vol. 15. Science Press, Beijing, and Missouri Botanical Garden Press, St. Louis, USA.]
online at www.efloras.org
/ref> published in 1996. However, as the distinctions of the former varieties are still widely recognized in horticulture, they are treated separately here:
Cultivation
''Buddleja davidii'' cultivars are much appreciated worldwide as ornamentals and for the value of their flowers as a nectar
Nectar is a sugar-rich liquid produced by plants in glands called nectaries or nectarines, either within the flowers with which it attracts pollinating animals, or by extrafloral nectaries, which provide a nutrient source to animal mutualist ...
source for many species of butterfly
Butterflies are insects in the macrolepidopteran clade Rhopalocera from the order Lepidoptera, which also includes moths. Adult butterflies have large, often brightly coloured wings, and conspicuous, fluttering flight. The group comprises ...
. However, the plant does not provide food for butterfly larvae, and buddlejas might out-compete the host plants that caterpillars require.
The species and its cultivars are not able to survive the harsh winters of northern or montane climates, being killed by temperatures below about .
Younger wood is more