[For Charles Alston, 1683–1760, Scottish professor of botany, University of Edinburgh]

David E. Lemke

Trees [shrubs]; latex milky. Stems erect, unarmed, glabrous [eglandular-pubescent]. Leaves persistent, whorled [opposite], petiolate; stipular colleters interpetiolar; laminar colleters absent. Inflorescences terminal, compound-cymose, pedunculate. Flowers: calycine colleters absent; corolla white, yellow, or cream, salverform, aestivation dextrorse [sinistrorse]; corolline corona absent; androecium and gynoecium not united into a gynostegium; stamens distinct, inserted at top of corolla tube; anthers not connivent, not adherent to stigma, connectives not appendiculate or enlarged, locules 4; pollen free, not massed into pollinia, translators absent; nectary annular. Fruits follicles, usually paired, pendulous, brown, slender, terete, surface striate, glabrous or pubescent. Seeds elliptic to oblong, flattened, marginally long-ciliate, not winged, not beaked, comose, not arillate. x = 11.

Species ca. 43 (2 in the flora): introduced, Florida; Asia, Africa, Indian Ocean Islands, Pacific Islands, Australia.

SELECTED REFERENCES Monachino, J. 1949. A revision of the genus Alstonia (Apocynaceae). Pacific Sci. 3: 133–182. Sidiyasa, K. 1998. Taxonomy, phylogeny, and wood anatomy of Alstonia (Apocynaceae). Blumea, Suppl. 11: 1–230.

Lower Taxa

• Alstonia macrophylla Wallich ex G. Don
• Alstonia scholaris (Linnaeus) R. Brown