Murraya

Murraya () is a genus of flowering plants in the citrus family, Rutaceae. It is distributed in Asia, Australia, and the Pacific Islands. The center of diversity is in southern China and Southeast Asia. When broadly circumscribed, the genus has about 17 species. A narrower circumscription contains only eight species, others being placed in Bergera and Merrillia.

Description

Plants in the genus Murraya are shrubs or trees with pinnate leaves arranged alternately, usually glandular, aromatic, and leathery to membranous in texture. The leaflets vary in shape and have smooth or toothed edges. The inflorescence is a panicle, cyme, or small raceme of flowers growing at the ends of branches or in the leaf axils; some flowers are solitary. The fragrant flowers have 4 or 5 sepals and white petals and up to 10 straight stamens. The fruit is a fleshy berry with pulp but without the juice vesicles present in some related fruits. It is up to 1.3 centimetres (0.51 in) long and orange, red, or black.

Taxonomy

The genus Murraya was first formally described in 1771 by Carl Linnaeus in Mantissa Plantarum Altera from an unpublished description by Johann Gerhard König. The genus name commemorates the 18th-century German-Swedish herbal doctor Johan Andreas Murray, a student of Linnaeus. In 1986, Paul P.-H. But and co-authors separated off some species of Murraya as M. sect. Bergera based on chemical evidence. Evidence from pollen morphology and multiple molecular phylogenetic studies showed that when broadly circumscribed, Murraya was not monophyletic, and treating M. sect. Bergera as the separate genus Bergera has widespread support.