Shrubs [lianas, subshrubs, trees]; latex milky. Stems trailing [erect], unarmed, glabrous or eglandular-pubescent. Leaves persistent, whorled [subwhorled], rarely opposite [distally alternate], petiolate or sessile; stipular colleters present, intrapetiolar; laminar colleters absent. Inflorescences axillary or subterminal, cymose, pedunculate. Flowers: calycine colleters absent; corolla yellow [pink, red, violet], funnelform, aestivation sinistrorse; corolline corona dissected; androecium and gynoecium not united into a gynostegium; stamens inserted near top of corolla tube; anthers not connivent, not adherent to stigma; connectives not appendiculate, locules 4; pollen free, not massed into pollinia, translators absent; nectary annular. Fruits capsules, solitary, erect, green or tinged with purple-red, subglobose to globose, surface spiny [smooth], glabrous. Seeds orbiculate to ovoid, flattened, winged, not beaked, not comose, not arillate. x = 9.

Distribution

Introduced; Florida, South America, some species introduced in tropical regions nearly worldwide.

Discussion

Species ca. 15 (1 in the flora).

The systematic position of Allamanda within Apocynaceae has long been uncertain. At anthesis the ovary is compound, leading K. M. Schumann (1895) to place Allamanda with other genera with compound ovaries in a supposed primitive alliance in the family. M. E. Fallen (1985) has demonstrated that the compound ovary is derived from a gynoecium with two separate ovaries and, based on both molecular and morphological evidence (A. O. Simões et al. 2007), the genus is currently placed in the Plumerieae clade of the subfamily Rauvolfioideae.

Selected References

None.

Lower Taxa

Allamanda cathartica