Mount Olympus St. John's wort

Description

Hypericum olympicum, commonly known as the Mount Olympus St. John's wort, is a species of flowering plant in the family Hypericaceae found in the Balkans and Turkey and introduced to western Europe. It has been widely cultivated for centuries because of its large, showy flowers, which are far larger than those of most other species in Hypericum. H. olympicum was first described in Carolus Linnaeus's Species Plantarum in 1753. H. olympicum contains both hypericin and pseudohypericin, a trait shared in the Olympia group and sections Adenosepalum and Hypericum, which would suggest that the species is more closely related to species in those sections than in other more primitive sections. There are eight accepted infraspecifics of H. olympicum, three of which are varieties and five of which are forms. These generally have very little variance from the type of the species, but can have some minor unique features. The species is a shrub or subshrub that grows to be 0.1–0.55 metres (0.33–1.80 ft) tall. It can grow in an erect to decumbent manner, or rarely prostrate. It can have few to numerous stems, and it is caespitose, occasionally rooting, and unbranched below its flowers. The stems' internodes are 5–15 millimetres (0.20–0.59 in) long, and can be either short or longer than the leaves. The leaves are spreading to erect, and are more or less glaucous, and are 5–30 by 2–12 millimetres (0.197 in–1.181 in × 0.079 in–0.472 in) in size. They are elliptic or rarely lanceolate-elliptic, are concolorous and thinly coriaceous. Their apex is acute to subacute or rounded-obtuse, with a rounded or cuneate base. They have 0-3 pairs of lateral veins and are unbranched (at least visibly). The laminar glands are pale and not prominent, and the intramarginal glands are black, small, and few in number. The species is native to Southeastern Serbia, Macedonia, Albania, Bulgaria, Greece (excluding Crete and western Aegean islands), and northwestern Turkey. The species was first introduced to England in 1676 by Sir George Wheeler from seeds found in Turkey, and it was cultivated at the Oxford Botanical Garden. The species has also been recorded as establishing itself in Belgium and France, where it is considered an invasive species. It can be found in sandy, stony, and sometimes grassy places or among rocks in open ground, or in pine woodland at elevations of 0–2000 m.