Stellera is a genus of flowering plant in the family Thymelaeaceae, with a single species Stellera chamaejasme found in mountainous regions of northern and western Tibet, Nepal, Bhutan, the state of Uttar Pradesh in north India, Siberia, and Mongolia. The genus Stellera was first described by Carl Linnaeus in 1753. The generic name Stellera (not to be confused with the entirely unrelated Stellaria) commemorates botanist Georg Wilhelm Steller (1709–1746), while the specific epithet chamaejasme is a rendering into botanical Latin orthography of the Greek “(down) on the ground” and “jasmine”. The name in its entirety thus means “Steller’s plant that resembles a kind of jasmine (that creeps) on the ground”. The flower of Stellera chamaejasme is fragrant like that of jasmine and also has a wine-red exterior, like that of certain species of jasmine. The plant is virulently poisonous.
