Gardenia J. Ellis is a large, Old World genus of about
200 species, all of which are either shrubs or trees restricted to the warm and tropical regions in Africa, Asia, and the Pacific islands (Mabberley 2008; Govaerts et al. 2012). The most wellknown species is Gardenia jasminoides J. Ellis, the type species of the genus, a shrub native to southern China, Japan, the Ryukus, and Taiwan. This species is popular in horticulture and is largely cultivated for its large fragrant and showy “double-corolla” flowers. For Sulawesi, a region extremely rich in plant diversity but poorly explored botanically (Whitten et al. 1987; Kessler et al.
2002; Vermeulen and O’Byrne 2011), Gardenia is little known and has not been revised taxonomically.