A Gram-staining-positive, catalase-positive, oxidase-negative, facultatively anaerobic, rodshaped bacterium designated strain DCY88 T , was isolated from flowers of magnolia. Phylogenetic analysis based on 16S rRNA gene sequence comparison revealed that the strain formed a distinct lineage within the genus Paenibacillus that was closely related to Paenibacillus hordei RH-N24 T (97.8 %). The other most closely related species were Paenibacillus illinoisensis NRRL NRS-1356 T (94.3 %), Paenibacillus hunanensis DSM 22170 T (94.2 %), Paenibacillus peoriae DSM 8320 T (93.9 %), Paenibacillus kribbensis Am49 T (93.8 %) and the type species of the genus, Paenibacillus polymyxa ATCC 842 T (93.3 %). Cells of the strain were endospore-forming and motile by peritrichous flagella. Strain DCY88 T formed pinkpigmented colonies on trypticase soy agar and R2A agar medium. Growth of strain DCY88 T occurs at temperatures 5-37 8C, at pH 4-9 and 0.5-5.5 % NaCl (w/v). The menaquinone was MK-7.The cell wall peptidoglycan of strain DCY88 T contained meso-diaminopimelic acid. The major fatty acids were anteiso-C 15 : 0 (61.0 %) and C 16 : 0 (11.0 %). The major polar lipids were diphosphatidylglycerol, phosphatidylglycerol, phosphatidylethanolamine and an unidentified polar lipid. The strain DCY88 T contained spermidine as the major polyamine. The DNA G+C content was 51.6 mol%. The DNA-DNA hybridization relatedness between strain DCY88 T and P. hordei RH-N24 T was 48¡2 %. The phenotypic, phylogenetic and chemotaxonomic results indicate that the strain DCY88 T represents a novel species of the genus Paenibacillus, for which the name Paenibacillus kyungheensis sp. nov. is proposed. The type strain is DCY88 T (5JCM 19886 T 5KCTC 33429 T ).The genus Paenibacillus, which belongs to the family Paenibacillaceae, is a group of bacilli that was described by Ash et al. (1993), and its description was emended by Shida et al. (1997a). Species of the genus Paenibacillus are either Gram-stain-positive or variable, facultatively anaerobic or strictly aerobic, produce ellipsoidal endospores, and are non-pigmented, rod-shaped and motile, with a DNA G+C content of 40 to 54 mol% (Ash et al., 1993; Shida et al., 1997a,b;Slepecky & Hemphill, 1992;Claus & Berkeley, 1986). Members of the genus are widespread microorganisms commonly isolated from various sources, including the rhizosphere of trees (Jiang et al., 2015;Jin et al., 2011b), c-irradiated Antarctic soil (Dsouza et al., 2014), duckweed (Kittiwongwattana & Thawai, 2015), nodules of Lupinus albus (Carro et al., 2014), tidal flats (Wang et al., 2012), water springs (Tang et al., 2011), rice seeds (Liu et al., 2010), iron mineral soil (Cao et al., 2015) and necrotic wounds (Glaeser et al., 2013). The cell wall peptidoglycan of members of the genus Paenibacillus is meso-diaminopimelic acid, and menaquinone-7 (MK-7) is the predominant menaquinone. Diphosphatidylglycerol is the major polar lipid in all the members of the genus Paenibacillus for which polar lipid data are available (Yao et al., 2014). The ...