Complete chloroplast genome of Firmiana major (Malvaceae), a critically endangered species endemic to southwest China

Firmiana major is an endangered species in southwest China, which had been considered as extinct in the wild on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species in 1998. Fortunately, around 2000 wild individuals were rediscovered along the valley of Jinshajiang river in south Sichuan and north Yunnan. In this study, we reported a complete chloroplast genome of F. major, which was de novo assembled using the next-generation sequencing data. The plastome was 161,302 bp in length, consisting of a pair of inverted repeat (25,543 bp for each), one large single copy (90,178 bp) and one small single copy (20,038 bp) regions. The whole genome contained 132 genes, including 87 protein-coding, 37 tRNA and 8 rRNA genes. The overall GC content of the whole genome was 36.9%. Maximum likelihood analysis showed that F. major was sister to Tilia spp.