lycium

Updated: May 19, 2025

This is a pretty and interesting shrub belonging to the more familiar Witch Hazel family. Flowers clustered in small heads, the calyx pale green, and the long linear petals almost pure white. Being quite hardy, and interesting as well as ornamental, should insure this Chinese shrub a place in every good collection. LYCIUM BARBARUM. Box Thorn, or Tea Tree. North Asia, 1696.

Angus Duncan Webster - Hardy Ornamental Flowering Trees and Shrubs

The capacity of producing spines is also a double adaptation, active on dry and arid soil and latent in a moist climate or under cultivation, as with the wild and cultivated apple, and in the experiments of Lothelier with Berberis, Lycium and other species, which lose their spines in damp air.

Hugo de Vries - Species and Varieties, Their Origin by Mutation