National Flower of Pakistan - Poet's Jasmine

The National symbols of the country constituting the nation-state such as the Poet's Jasmine (National flower of Pakistan) and Rhododendron the (State flower) and the Chinar (State tree) in the Regional state of Jammu and Kashmir (disputed territory), Deodar (National tree of Pakistan), Mango (National fruit of Pakistan).

Jasminum officinale (Common Jasmine, Poet's Jasmine, Jessamine) is a species of jasmine, in the family Oleaceae, famous for its scent.

Jasminum officinale is so ancient in cultivation that its country of origin, though somewhere in Central Asia, is not certain. H.L. Li, The Garden Flowers of China, notes that in the third century CE, jasmines identifiable as J. officinale and J. sambac were recorded among "foreign" plants in Chinese texts, and that in ninth century Chinese texts J. officinale was said to come from Byzantium. Its Chinese name, Yeh-hsi-ming is a version of the Persian and Arabic name.

Its entry into European gardens was most likely through the Arab-Norman culture of Sicily, but, as the garden historian John Harvey has said, "surprisingly little is known, historically or archaeologically, of the cultural life of pre-Norman Sicily". In the mid-14th century the Florentine Boccaccio in his Decameron describes a walled garden in which "the sides of the alleys were all, as it were, walled in with roses white and red and jasmine; insomuch that there was no part of the garden but one might walk there not merely in the morning but at high noon in grateful shade." Jasmine water also features in the story of Salabaetto in the Decameron. Jasminum officinale, "of the household office" where perfumes were distilled, was so thoroughly naturalized that Linnaeus thought it was native to Switzerland. As a garden plant in London it features in William Turner's Names of Herbes, 1548.

Double forms, here as among many flowers, were treasured in the 16th and 17th centuries. It is widely recognized as the National flower of Pakistan.

Source, Images: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jasminum_officinale