The complete chloroplast genome of horned holly, Ilex cornuta Lindl. (Aquifoliaceae)

Ilex cornuta Lindl. is a species distributed in eastern China and Korea, utilized as traditional medical plants as well as horticultural species. Here, we completed chloroplast genome of I. cornuta. Its length is 157,224 bp long and has four subregions: 86,610 bp of large single copy (LSC) and 18,429 bp of small single copy (SSC) regions are separated by 26,092 bp of inverted repeat (IR) regions including 131 genes (86 protein-coding genes, eight rRNAs, and 37 tRNAs). The overall GC content of this chloroplast genome is 37.7% and those in the LSC, SSC, and IR regions are 35.7%, 31.9%, and 42.9%, respectively. Phylogenetic trees show that I. cornuta is clustered in Section Ilex clade clearly. In addition, two Ilex species from South America are not in a basal clade, which is different from previous phylogenetic study, suggesting more Ilex chloroplast genomes are required to understand phylogenetic relationships of Ilex species.