Description:

• Herbs, subshrubs, tendrilous lianes or trees, mostly with milky sap; indole alkaloids often present
• Flowers often fragrant
• Corolla: lobe aestivation almost always sinistrorse; rarely corona present in mouth
• Disc annular, cup-shaped, of 2 glands or absent
• Stamens: filaments ± free, usually short, arising on corolla tube; anthers 4-locular, mostly entirely fertile, free from style head; pollen in monads, 3- or 4-colporate
• Nectary in ring around base of ovary
• Ovary superior to slightly inferior, entire and 1- or 2-locular, with 1-4(more) ovules per locule, or consisting of 2 distinct, partly fused, usually many-seeded carpels; style 1, ending in a ± enlarged style head (pistil head) with a nonreceptive stigmoid apex and a true stigma on the cylindrical part underneath
• Fruit syncarpous or apocarpous, a berry, drupe or a pair (or 1 by abortion) of follicular mericarps
• Seeds ± ovoid to flattened, sometimes winged, often ruminate, glabrous, without a coma (tuft of hairs)

Nomenclature:

• Plumerioideae
  • Schumann: 122 (1895)
  • Leeuwenberg: 1219 (1994)
  • Takhtajan: 434 (1997)

Distribution & Notes:

• Southern Africa: Genera 11

References:

• 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
• SCHUMANN, K.M. 1895. Apocynaceae. Die natürlichen Pflanzenfamilien 4,2
• TAKHTAJAN, A. 1997. Diversity and classification of flowering plants. Columbia University Press, New York

Resources:

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

• Plumerioideae genera: