Plant Description, Growth, and Flowering of Two Indonesian Jasmines

Jasmine flowers (Jasminum sambac) are very popular in Indonesia and Asia because of their strong sweet fragrance. Jasmine flowers have been used to decorate weddings, houses of worship, and festivals and are included in aromatic products like candles, perfumes, soaps, and lotions. Despite its popularity, studies on morphology, growth, and flowering characteristics of various jasmine species are lacking. Our study aims to describe the morphology and flowering of jasmine cultivars from a relatively humid environment, Java Island (Emprit Bandar Arum), and a relatively drier environment, Madura Island (Ratoh Ebuh), Indonesia. Each cultivar has seven blocks of four plants each block. The study was conducted at Cikabayan, West Java, Indonesia, from April 2022 to February 2023. Java and Madura’s jasmine have morphological similarities in their stem shape and color, leaf type, shape and arrangement, calyx structure, petal shape, and flower color. The two jasmine species differ in leaf size, leaf tip shape, stomatal size and density, and duration from floral bud initiation to anthesis. Madura jasmines produced about 20% more flowers than Java jasmines. Understanding the morphology and flowering of different types of jasmine is important to correctly identify the jasmine cultivars to determine the peak flowering season and flower production. A list of characters that can potentially be used for future studies of the two jasmine cultivars was described. The results of this study would benefit commercial growers in choosing the right type/cultivar to grow and predicting the time to harvest the flowers in a particular region.