Description:

• Trees, erect or scandent, sometimes succulent shrubs or woody climbers, mostly with milky sap; glycosides often present
• Stipules occasionally spinose
• Flowers usually fragrant
• Corolla: lobe aestivation almost always dextrorse; sometimes with scales, protuberances, ridges or corona in mouth
• Disc annular or cupular or of 2-5 scales, sometimes ± adnate to ovary, rarely 0
• Stamens usually included; filaments ± free, arising on corolla tube, often very short; anthers conniving in a cone around style and ± adherent to style head, 4-locular, mostly fertile only near apex, often with an apical appendage, sometimes united at tip; pollen shed in monads, 3- or 4-porate
• Nectary in a ring around base of ovary
• Ovary superior to slightly inferior; carpels 2, partly fused, with many ovules; style 1, entire or divided at base, ending in a ± enlarged style head (pistil head) with a nonreceptive stigmoid apex and a true stigma on cylindrical part underneath
• Fruit of 2 follicular mericarps
• Seeds many, generally with a coma (tuft of hairs), not ruminate

Nomenclature:

• Apocynoideae
  • Jussieu: 143 (1789)
  • Stapf: 490 (1907)
  • Codd: 244 (1963)
  • Huber: 1 (1967)
  • Leeuwenberg & Kupicha et al.: 395 (1985)
  • Leeuwenberg: 1213 (1994)
  • Struwe et al.: 175 (1994)

Distribution & Notes:

• Southern Africa: Genera 8

References:

• CODD, L.E. 1963. Apocynaceae. Flora of southern Africa 26
• HUBER, H. 1967. Apocynaceae. Prodromus einer Flora von Südwestafrika 112
• JUSSIEU, A.L. DE. 1789. Apocyneae. Genera plantarum. Herissant & Barrois, Paris
• LEEUWENBERG, A.J.M. 1994. Taxa of the Apocynaceae above the genus level. In J.H. Seyani & A.C. Chikuni, Proceedings of the 13th plenary meeting AETFAT, 2. Malawi
• LEEUWENBERG, A.J.M. & KUPICHA, F.K. et al. 1985. Apocynaceae. Flora zambesiaca 7,2
• STAPF, O. 1907. Apocynaceae. Flora capensis 4,1
• STRUWE, L., ALBERT, V.A. & BREMER, B. 1994. Cladistics and family level classification of the GENTIANALES. Cladistics 10

Resources:

• Key to Apocynaceae Subfamilies
• Classification of Apocynoideae
• Key to Apocynoideae genera

• Apocynoideae genera: