Complete Chloroplast Genomes from : Identity and Variation Among Four Species.

The genus , which contains about 30 species around the world and seven species in China, is the source of the medicinal plant , which is commonly used as a hemostatic agent as well as to treat burns and scalds. Here we report the complete chloroplast (cp) genome sequences of four species (, , , and var. ). These four cp genomes exhibit typical quadripartite and circular structures, and are 154,282 to 155,479 bp in length, consisting of large single-copy regions (LSC; 84,405⁻85,557 bp), small single-copy regions (SSC; 18,550⁻18,768 bp), and a pair of inverted repeats (IRs; 25,576⁻25,615 bp). The average GC content was ~37.24%. The four cp genomes harbored 112 different genes arranged in the same order; these identical sections include 78 protein-coding genes, 30 tRNA genes, and four rRNA genes, if duplicated genes in IR regions are counted only once. A total of 39⁻53 long repeats and 79⁻91 simple sequence repeats (SSRs) were identified in the four cp genomes, which provides opportunities for future studies of the population genetics of medicinal plants. A phylogenetic analysis using the maximum parsimony (MP) method strongly supports a close relationship between and var. , followed by , and finally . The availability of these cp genomes provides valuable genetic information for future studies of identification and provides insights into the evolution of the genus .