The complete chloroplast genome of the endangered Chinese paperbark maple, Acer griseum (Sapindaceae)

The paperbark maple, Acer griseum, is an excellent landscape and ornamental species endemic to China, but its populations are now very fragmented and in decline. Here we characterized the complete chloroplast (cp) genome of A. griseum using genome skimming sequencing. The A. griseum cp genome was 156,857 bp in size, with a large single copy region of 85,227 bp and a small single copy region of 18,134 bp separated by a pair of inverted repeats of 26,748 bp. The genome encoded a total of 134 genes, of which 113 were unique, including 78 protein-coding genes, 4 rRNA genes and 31 tRNA genes. The overall GC content of the cp genome was 37.9%. The phylogenomic analysis strongly supported the monophyly of Acer and placed A. griseum as the basal-most species in Acer lineage. This complete cp genome will be useful for further studies of the endangered maple tree.