4. Carissa Linnaeus, Syst. Nat. ed. 12. 2: 135, 189. 1767; Mant. Pl. 1: 52. 1767. name conserved.
[I]
[Derivation uncertain; perhaps Sanskrit krishna, dark blue, or Greek charis, grace, alluding to appearance of mature fruit]
David E. Lemke
Shrubs [trees, vines]; latex milky. Stems erect [scandent], armed with paired spines [unarmed], glabrous or eglandular-pubescent especially on younger growth. Leaves persistent, opposite [whorled], petiolate; stipular colleters intrapetiolar and interpetiolar; laminar colleters absent. Inflorescences terminal [axillary], cymose, short-pedunculate. Flowers: calycine colleters present or absent; corolla white [pink], salverform, aestivation sinistrorse [dextrorse]; corolline corona absent; androecium and gynoecium not united into a gynostegium; stamens 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; nectaries absent. Fruits baccate, solitary, erect [pendulous], red or purple [black], globose or ellipsoid, terete or somewhat compressed, surface smooth, glabrous. Seeds obliquely ovate to elliptic or orbiculate, flattened, not winged, not beaked, not comose, not arillate. x = 11.
Species 7 (1 in the flora): introduced; Asia, Africa, Indian Ocean Islands, Pacific Ocean Islands, Australia.
SELECTED REFERENCE Leeuwenberg, A. J. M. and F. J. H. van Dilst. 2001. Series of revisions of Apocynaceae XLIX. Carissa L. Wageningen Univ. Pap. 1: 3–109, 123–126.
