Aesculus hippocastanum Linnaeus is an important species of Aesculus (Sapindaceae) with significant economic and ecological value. This study analyzed for the first time the complete chloroplast genome of A. hippocastanum . The genome’s circular structure, a common quadripartite form, spanned a total length of 156,234 bp. Annotation revealed 129 total genes, comprising 84 genes coding for proteins, 8 rRNA genes and 37 tRNA genes. The overall GC content of the plastome was 37.86%. The average A/T content of the whole plastome in Aesculus was 62.09% and a total of 68-80 SSR loci were detected. The psbZ-trnG region exhibited the highest degree of nucleotide variation within Aesculus . Phylogenetic reconstruction showed that A. hippocastanum shared its closest evolutionary relationship with A. turbinata . This research established a crucial genomic foundation for clarifying its phylogenetic position, supporting conservation initiatives, and enabling future functional genomic studies.
LI et al. (Sun,) studied this question.