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Maytenus

Genus of flowering plants

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Maytenus /ˈmtɛnəs/ is a genus of flowering plants in the family Celastraceae. Members of the genus are distributed throughout Central and South America, Southeast Asia, Micronesia, and Australasia, the Indian Ocean and Africa. They grow in a very wide variety of climates, from tropical to subpolar. The traditional circumscription of Maytenus was paraphyletic, so many species have been transferred to Denhamia and Gymnosporia.

01Species

176 species are accepted.

Undescribed species:

Formerly placed here

02Cultivation and uses

Maytenus boaria and Maytenus magellanica are the most known species in Europe and the United States because these are the most cold-tolerant trees of this mostly tropical genus. The bark of Maytenus krukovii has a variety of documented medicinal properties; it is also sometimes admixed into decoctions of ayahuasca.

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Sources and credits

This article is adapted from the Wikipedia article Maytenus, written by its contributors and licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Fathomly has changed the layout, removed citation markers, navigation and maintenance notices, and adjusted punctuation. This adapted version is shared under the same license. For references, see the original article.

Images, from Wikimedia Commons:

  • Maitén.JPG by No machine-readable author provided. Roblespepe assumed (based on copyright claims)., Public domain

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