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Quassia ( or ) is a plant genus in the family Simaroubaceae. Its size is disputed; some treat it as consisting of only one species, Quassia amara from tropical South America, while others treat it in a wide circumscription as a pantropical genus containing up to 40 species of and .
The genus was named after a former slave from Suriname, Graman Quassi in the eighteenth century. He discovered the medicinal properties of the bark of Quassia amara.Christophe Wiart
In 1962, Dutch botanist Hans Peter Nooteboom (1934–2022) had taken a very broad view of the genus Quassia and included therein various genera including, Hannoa , Odyendyea , Pierreodendron , Samadera , Simaba and Simarouba . Then in 2007, DNA sequencing, and phylogenetic analyses was carried out on members of the Simaroubaceae family. It found that genus Samadera was a sister to Clade V and that genus Quassia was also a sister to Clade V but they had separate lineages. This suggested the splitting up of genera Quassia again, with all Nooteboom's synonyms listed above being resurrected as independent genera. This includes Samadera indica as the accepted name for Quassia indica. The ornamental Quassia amara , which is occasionally planted in Singapore, remains in genus Quassia.
The plant is naturalised in the following places: Cuba, Dominican Republic, Haiti, Jamaica, Jawa, and Puerto Rico.
Although World Flora Online accepts 16 species;
There are also taxa that have not been assigned a formal status:
The genus has been verified by the United States Department of Agriculture and the Agricultural Research Service (Germplasm Resources Information Network) and they only list 6 species; Quassia amara, Quassia cedron (syn. Simaba cedron, Quassia excelsa (syn. Picrasma excelsa), Quassia indica (syn. Samadera indica ), Quassia simarouba (syn. Simarouba amara ) and Quassia undulata.
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