Gastonia, NC

Gastonia Commerson ex Lamarck is a formerly accepted genus of flowering plants in the ivy and ginseng family, Araliaceae. It had been known as an unnatural group, but was recognized as late as 2010, when its nine species were distributed to four different subgenera of the large genus Polyscias. Because the genus Gastonia is now obsolete, its species are herein referred to by their names in Polyscias.

The species that constituted Gastonia are mostly island endemics, with Madagascar and New Guinea being the largest land masses on which any of them naturally occur. Gastonia had a disjunct distribution, with three species from the Seychelles, three more from the Mascarenes, one from Madagascar and the Comoro Islands, and two distributed from Malesia to the Solomon Islands.

Gastonia is a genus of small to large size trees. It shares with related genera, the lack of an articulation on the pedicel, below the flower. It is distinguished from Reynoldsia, Munroidendron, and Tetraplasandra by the radiating style arms that persist on the fruit.