Edgeworthia Meissner (1841), in the family Thymelaeaceae, contains 3 species in eastern Asia.

Description Shrubs to 2m, usually with many stems from near the ground. The leaves are alternate, evergreen or deciduous, 8–15cm long, lanceolate. The flowers are in nodding, spherical heads at the tips of the branches, sweetly scented, tubular at the base. Sepals 4, yellow, orange, or red; petals absent. Stamens 8, attached to the inside of the tube, the anthers on short filaments; carpel 1, style slender, with a long, papillose stigma. Pollination is by insects. The fruits are dry, surrounded by the base of the sepal tube.

Key Recognition Features The nodding, spherical heads of yellow or orange flowers, very silky outside.

Evolution and Relationships Other related genera are Wikstroemia Endl. with around 20 species in China and Japan, which has scales on the disk at the base of the flower and sometimes 5 sepals, and Stellera L., which is Daphne-like but has a stout rootstock and herbaceous stems.

Ecology and Geography In scrub and open forests, by streams, the deciduous E. chrysantha Lindl. in central and eastern China, and the evergreen E. gardneri (Wall.) Meissn. in the eastern Himalayas and western China.

Comment Edgeworthia chrysantha is cultivated in Japan, where it is called mitsumata and used for making a fine, strong, silky paper, and E. gardneri is used for paper in the Himalayas. An even finer, silkier Japanese paper is made from Wikstroemia canescens Meissn, called gampi. Edgeworthia is named after Michael Packenham Edgeworth F.L.S. (1812–81), an Irish botanist in the Bengal Civil Service.