Chrysanthemum indicum, an important medicinal plant of Asteraceae, had a long history in use for medicine in China. In this study, the complete chloroplast genome of C. indicum was sequenced by a 454 sequencing platform, and the structure of the obtained chloroplast genome was also analyzed. The complete chloroplast genome of C. indicum was 150 972 bp in length and had a pair of inverted repeats (IR, 24 956 bp) separated by a large (LSC, 82 741 bp) and small single copy (SSC, 18 319 bp) regions. Its total GC content was 37.48%. There were 126 chloroplast genes including 83 protein-coding genes, 35 tRNAs and eight rRNAs were successfully annotated. Sixteen genes contained one or two introns. Phylogenetic analyses declared that the chloroplast genome could distinguish C. indicum from its closely related species and might become a potential super barcode for the identification of these species.

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Safflower (Carthamus tinctorius L.) is a traditional medical plants of Asia. In this study, the complete chloroplast genome of safflower was presented. The total genome size was 153,675 bp in length, containing a pair of inverted repeats (IRs) of 25,407 bp, separated by large single copy (LSC) and small single copy (SSC) of 83,606 bp and 19,156 bp, respectively. Overall GC content of the genome was 37.4%. The chloroplast genome harbored 127 annotated genes, including 89 protein coding genes, 30 tRNA genes and 8 rRNA genes. A total of 7 of these genes were duplicated in the inverted repeat regions. Twelve genes contained one intron.