[For Leonhart Rauwolff, 1535–1596, German physician and botanist]

David E. Lemke

Shrubs [trees]; latex milky. Stems erect, unarmed, glabrous [eglandular-pubescent]. Leaves persistent, whorled or sometimes opposite at lower nodes, petiolate; stipular colleters intrapetiolar; laminar colleters absent. Inflorescences terminal and axillary, cymose, pedunculate. Flowers: calycine colleters absent; corolla white or cream [pale purple, pink], rotate [salverform], aestivation sinistrorse; 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; nectary annular. Fruits drupaceous, solitary or partly to completely coherent, erect, initially red, maturing black, globose to depressed-globose, smooth, glabrous. Seeds ovate, not winged, not beaked, not comose, not arillate. x = 11.

Species ca. 80 (1 in the flora): introduced, Florida; Mexico, West Indies, Central America, South America, Asia, Africa, Indian Ocean Islands, Pacific Islands, introduced also in s Asia, Australia.

SELECTED REFERENCE Rao, A. S. 1956. A revision of Rauvolfia with particular reference to the American species. Ann. Missouri Bot. Gard. 43: 253–354.

Lower Taxon

• Rauvolfia tetraphylla Linnaeus