Frangipani [For Charles Plumier, 1646–1704, French botanist who collected extensively in the West Indies]

David E. Lemke

Trees, small or medium-sized; latex clear. Stems erect, unarmed, glabrous or eglandular-pubescent especially on younger growth. Leaves deciduous, alternate, petiolate; stipular colleters intrapetiolar; laminar colleters absent. Inflorescences terminal or subterminal, thyrsiform, pedunculate. Flowers: calycine colleters absent; corolla white with yellow eye [yellow, orange, pink, red, magenta], salverform, aestivation sinistrorse; corolline corona absent; androecium and gynoecium not united into a gynostegium; stamens inserted near base 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 absent. Fruits follicles, paired, pendulous, brown, slender, terete or slightly compressed, truncate, surface smooth or striate, glabrous. Seeds narrowly ovate, flattened, winged basally, not beaked, not comose, not arillate. x = 9.

Species ca. 10 (1 in the flora): introduced, Florida; Mexico, West Indies, Central America, n South America; cultivated widely in warmer regions of the world.

Although it honors Plumier, the genus name has always been written as here treated.

Plumeria rubra Linnaeus, a native of Mexico and Central America, is often cultivated in frost-free regions of Arizona, California, Florida, and Texas and can be distinguished by its more open, corymbose inflorescence of pink, red, magenta, orange, or yellow (rarely white) flowers.

SELECTED REFERENCE Woodson, R. E. Jr. 1938. Studies in the Apocynaceae. VII. An evaluation of the genera Plumeria L. and Himatanthus Willd. Ann. Missouri Bot. Gard. 25: 189–224.

Lower Taxon

• Plumeria obtusa Linnaeus