Lycium

Lycium is a genus of flowering plants in the nightshade family, Solanaceae. The genus has a disjunct distribution around the globe, with species occurring on most continents in temperate and subtropical regions. South America has the most species, followed by North America and southern Africa. There are several scattered across Europe and Asia, and one is native to Australia.[3] Common names English names for plants of this genus include box-thorn[4] and desert-thorn.[5]

Lycium
African boxthorn (Lycium ferocissimum)
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Plantae
(unranked):	Angiosperms
(unranked):	Eudicots
(unranked):	Asterids
Order:	Solanales
Family:	Solanaceae
Subfamily:	Solanoideae
Tribe:	Lycieae[1]
Genus:	Lycium L.[2]
Species
About 70-80, see text
Synonyms
Cantalea Raf. Evoista Raf. Jasminoides Duhamel Oplukion Raf. Panzeria J.F.Gmel. Teremis Raf.[2]

There are about 70[3] to 80[6][7] species. The most common are Lycium barbarum and Lycium chinense, whose fruits (wolfberries or goji berries) are a traditional food crop in China.

Etymology

The generic name Lycium is derived from the Greek word λυκιον (lykion), which was applied by Pliny the Elder (23-79) and Pedanius Dioscorides (ca. 40-90) to a plant known as dyer's buckthorn. It was probably a Rhamnus species and was named for Lycia (Λυκία), the ancient southern Anatolian region in which it grew.[8][9] The berry is called lycii fructus ("lycium fruit") in old Latin pharmacological texts.

Description

Lycium barbarum

Lycium are shrubs, often thorny, growing 1 to 4 meters tall. The leaves are small, narrow, and fleshy, and are alternately arranged, sometimes in fascicles. Flowers are solitary or borne in clusters. The funnel-shaped or bell-shaped corolla is white, green, or purple in color. The fruit is a two-chambered, usually fleshy and juicy berry which can be red, orange, yellow, or black. It may have few seeds or many.[4][6] Most Lycium have fleshy, red berries with over 10 seeds, but a few American taxa have hard fruits with two seeds.[7]

While most Lycium are monoecious, producing bisexual flowers with functional male and female parts, some species are gynodioecious, with some individuals bearing bisexual flowers and some producing functionally female flowers.[10]

Uses

Lycium has been known to European herbalists since ancient times, and species were traded from the Far East to Europe by the Romans, for example via Ariaca and the port of Barbarikon near today's Karachi, as mentioned in the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea. In his Naturalis historia, Pliny the Elder describes boxthorn as a medicinal plant, as does Pedanius Dioscorides in his P. Dioscoridae pharmacorum simplicium reique medicae.[11]

In his 1753 publication Species Plantarum, Linnaeus describes three Lycium species: L. afrum, L. barbarum, and L. europaeum.[11]

L. barbarum

Lycium, particularly L. barbarum, have long been used in traditional Chinese medicine.[12][13] The leaves and roots of other species of Lycium, such as L. europaeum, when mixed with water, have been used in folk medicine.[14] The fruit of L. barbatum and L. chinense, known as goji berry, is commonly consumed as a dried fruit.[12] The Chinese tonic gou qi zi ("wolfberry fruit") is made of the fruit of any of several Lycium species, and is used as a dietary supplement, although there is no evidence that it has any biological effects.[12]

Ecology

Lycium species mostly occur in arid and semi-arid climates, and a few are known from coastal zones in somewhat saline habitat types.[3]

Invasive species include L. ferocissimum, which was introduced to Australia and New Zealand and has become a dense, thorny pest plant there. It injures livestock, harbors pest mammals and insects, and displaces native species.[15]

Selected species

Lycium intricatum

Lycium sandwicense

Species include:[16][17]

Lycium acutifolium Lycium afrum L. – Kraal honey thorn Lycium ameghinoi Lycium amoenum Lycium andersonii – Anderson boxthorn, water-jacket Lycium arenicola Lycium australe F.Muell. Lycium barbarum – Barbary matrimony-vine, Chinese boxthorn, Duke of Argyll's teaplant, goji-berry, Himalayan goji, Tibetan goji Lycium bosciifolium Lycium berlandieri Dunal – Berlandier wolfberry Lycium brevipes – Baja desert-thorn Lycium californicum – California boxthorn, California desert-thorn Lycium carolinianum Walter – Carolina desert-thorn, Christmas berry Lycium chilense Bertero Lycium chinense – Chinese teaplant, Chinese wolfberry, Chinese boxthorn Lycium cinereum – Kriedoring Lycium cooperi – peachthorn, Cooper's wolfberry Lycium decumbens Lycium depressum Stocks Lycium eenii Lycium europaeum L. – European teatree, European matrimony-vine Lycium exsertum A.Gray – Arizona desert-thorn, littleleaf wolfberry Lycium ferocissimum – African boxthorn Lycium fremontii – Frémont's desert-thorn Lycium gariepense

Lycium grandicalyx Lycium hassei – Santa Catalina Island desert-thorn Lycium horridum Lycium hirsutum Lycium intricatum Lycium macrodon A.Gray – desert wolfberry Lycium mascarenense A.M. Venter & A.J. Scott (syn. L. tenue var. sieberi) Lycium nodosum Lycium oxycarpum Dunal Lycium pallidum Miers – pale desert-thorn Lycium parishii – Parish's desert-thorn Lycium pilifolium Lycium puberulum – downy desert-thorn Lycium pumilum Lycium ruthenicum Murray Lycium sandwicense A.Gray – ʻŌhelo kai, Hawaii desert-thorn Lycium schizocalyx Lycium schweinfurthii Lycium shawii Roem. & Schult. – Arabian boxthorn Lycium shockleyi – Shockley's desert-thorn Lycium sokotranum Lycium strandveldense Lycium tenue L. Lycium tenuispinosum Lycium tetrandrum Lycium texanum – Texas wolfberry Lycium torreyi – Torrey's boxthorn, squawthorn Lycium tweedianum – tropical desert-thorn Lycium villosum

Formerly placed here

• Serissa japonica (Thunb.) Thunb. (as L. foetidum L.f. or L. japonicum Thunb.)[16]

References

1. "Genus Lycium". Taxonomy. UniProt. Retrieved 2009-04-16.
2. "Genus: Lycium L." Germplasm Resources Information Network. United States Department of Agriculture. 2009-09-01. Retrieved 2010-12-13.
3. Fukuda, T., et al. (2001). Phylogeny and biogeography of the genus Lycium (Solanaceae): Inferences from chloroplast DNA sequences. Archived 2003-11-30 at the Wayback Machine Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 19(2), 246-58.
4. Lycium. The Jepson eFlora 2013.
5. "Lycium". Integrated Taxonomic Information System.
6. Lycium. Flora of China.
7. Levin, R. A. and J. S. Miller. (2005). Relationships within tribe Lycieae (Solanaceae): paraphyly of Lycium and multiple origins of gender dimorphism. American Journal of Botany 92(12), 2044-53.
8. Austin, D. F. (2004). Florida Ethnobotany. CRC Press. p. 677. ISBN 9780849323324.
9. Huxley, A., ed. (1992). New RHS Dictionary of Gardening. Macmillan ISBN 0-333-47494-5.
10. Miller, J. S. and D. L. Venable. (2002). The transition to gender dimorphism on an evolutionary background of self-incompatibility: an example from Lycium (Solanaceae). American Journal of Botany 89(12), 1907-15.
11. Hitchcock, C. L. (1932). A monographic study of the genus Lycium of the Western Hemisphere. Annals of the Missouri Botanical Garden 19(2/3), 179-348 and 350-66. doi:10.2307/2394155 (First page image).
12. Gross PM (2007). "Goji: what it is... and isn't". NewHope Network, Penton Media Inc.
13. "Goji Berries" (PDF). UK Food Standards Agency, Novel Foods, Additives and Supplements Division. June 2007. Archived from the original (PDF) on 20 November 2012. Retrieved 13 April 2013.
14. Nissim Krispil, Medicinal Plants in Israel and Throughout the World - the Complete Guide, Or Yehuda (Israel) 2000, pp. 38–39 (Hebrew)
15. Lycium ferocissimum (African boxthorn). Invasive Species Compendium. CABI.
16. "GRIN Species Records of Lycium". Germplasm Resources Information Network. United States Department of Agriculture. Archived from the original on 2008-10-05. Retrieved 2010-12-13.
17. "Lycium". Integrated Taxonomic Information System. Retrieved 2010-12-13.

External links

• Project Lycieae, Amherst College