The genus Houpoea belongs to the family Magnoliaceae, and the species in this genus have important medicinal values. However, the investigation of the correlation between the evolution of the genus and its phylogeny has been severely hampered by the unknown range of species within the genus and the paucity of research on its chloroplast genome. Thus, we selected three species of Houpoea: Houpoea officinalis var officinalis (OO), Houpoea officinalis var. biloba (OB), and Houpoea rostrata (R). With lengths of 160,153 bp (OO), 160,011 bp (OB), and 160,070 bp (R), respectively, the whole chloroplast genomes (CPGs) of these three Houpoea plants were acquired via Illumina sequencing technology, and the findings were annotated and evaluated. These three chloroplast genomes were revealed by the annotation findings to be typical tetrads. A total of 131, 132, and 120 different genes were annotated. The CPGs of the three species had 52, 47, and 56 repeat sequences, which were primarily found in the ycf2 gene. A useful tool for identifying species is the approximately 170 simple sequence repeats (SSRs) that have been found. The border area of the reverse repetition region (IR) was studied, and it was shown that across the three Houpoea plants, it is highly conservative, with only changes between H. rostrata and the other two plants observed. Numerous highly variable areas (rps3-rps19, rpl32-trnL, ycf1, ccsA, etc.) have the potential to serve as the barcode label for Houpoea, according to an examination of mVISTA and nucleotide diversity (Pi). Phylogenetic relation indicates that Houpoea is a monophyletic taxon, and its genus range and systematic position are consistent with the Magnoliaceae system of Sima Yongkang-Lu Shugang, including five species and varieties of H. officinalis var. officinalis, H. rostrata, H. officinalis var. biloba, Houpoea obovate, and Houpoea tripetala, which evolved and differentiated from the ancestors of Houpoea to the present Houpoea in the above order. This study provides valuable information on the genus Houpoea, enriches the CPG information on Houpoea genus, and provides genetic resources for the further classification of and phylogenetic research on Houpoea.

Many wild ornamental plant species have been introduced to improve the landscape of cities; however, until now, no study has been performed to explore the composition and function of foliar endophytes associated with cultivated rare plants in cities after their introduction. In this study, we collected the leaves of the healthy ornamental plant Lirianthe delavayi from wild and artificially cultivated habitats in Yunnan and compared their diversity, species composition, and functional predictions of their foliar endophytic fungal community based on high-throughput sequencing technology. In total, 3125 ASVs of fungi were obtained. The alpha diversity indices of wild L. delavayi populations are similar to those of cultivated samples; however, the species compositions of endophytic fungal ASVs were significantly varied in the two habitats. The dominant phylum is Ascomycota, accounting for more than 90% of foliar endophytes in both populations; relatively, artificial cultivation trends to increase the frequency of common phytopathogens of L. delavayi, such as Alternaria, Erysiphe. The relative abundance of 55 functional predictions is different between wild and cultivated L. delavayi leaves (p < 0.05); in particular, chromosome, purine metabolism, and peptidases are significantly increased in wild samples, while flagellar assembly, bacterial chemotaxis, and fatty acid metabolism are significantly enhanced in cultivated samples. Our results indicated that artificial cultivation can greatly change the foliar endophytic fungal community of L. delavayi, which is valuable for understanding the influence of the domestication process on the foliar fungal community associated with rare ornamental plants in urban environments.