10. Tabernaemontana Linnaeus, Sp. Pl. 1: 210. 1753; Gen. Pl. ed. 5, 100. 1754.
[I]
Milkwood [For Jacobus Theodorus Tabernaemontanus, 1525–1590, German physician and herbalist]
David E. Lemke
Shrubs or trees; latex milky. Stems erect, unarmed, glabrous or eglandular-pubescent especially on younger growth. Leaves persistent, opposite, petiolate; stipular colleters intrapetiolar; laminar colleters absent. Inflorescences axillary, compound-cymose, pedunculate. Flowers: calycine colleters present; corolla white, cream, or yellow [pink, pale purple], salverform, aestivation sinistrorse [dextrorse]; corolline corona absent; androecium and gynoecium not united into a gynostegium; stamens inserted near top [middle] 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 or absent. Fruits follicular [baccate], solitary or paired, deflexed, yellow, orange, red, or green, ellipsoid or reniform, compressed, smooth, glabrous. Seeds obliquely elliptic, somewhat flattened, not winged, not beaked, not comose, arillate. x = 11.
Species ca. 110 (2 in the flora): introduced, Florida; Mexico, West Indies, Central America, South America, Asia, Africa, Indian Ocean Islands, Pacific Islands.
Tabernaemontana was established by Linnaeus based on three species, one from tropical Asia and two from the West Indies. The genus was greatly enlarged by A. L. P. P. de Candolle (1844), who recognized more than 60 species from the New World and Old World tropics, but later largely dismembered as taxonomists such as J. Miers (1878) and O. Stapf (1902) began to establish segregate genera, these often restricted to either the Paleotropics or the Neotropics. A revision of Tabernaemontana by M. Pichon (1948b) proposed a broad circumscription of the genus to again include both New World and Old World species, a delimitation largely followed by A. J. M. Leeuwenberg (1991, 1994) in the most recent taxonomic treatments of the group.
A phylogenetic analysis of the tribe Tabernaemontaneae G. Don by A. O. Simões et al. (2010), based on a combination of molecular and morphological characters, found that the species assigned to Tabernaemontana and its segregates form a clade with a deep split into paleotropical and neotropical lineages and that this clade corresponds closely, but not exactly, to the broad circumscription of the genus by A. J. M. Leeuwenberg (1991, 1994). To render Tabernaemontana monophyletic, Simões et al. proposed delimiting the genus to encompass not only the New World and Old World species that had been included in Tabernaemontana by Leeuwenberg but also the neotropical genus Stemmadenia Bentham, a delimitation followed here.
SELECTED REFERENCES Leeuwenberg, A. J. M. 1990. Tabernaemontana (Apocynaceae): Discussion of its delimitation. In: P. Baas et al., eds. 1990. The Plant Diversity of Malesia. Dordrecht and Boston. Pp. 73–81. Leeuwenberg, A. J. M. 1991. A Revision of Tabernaemontana: The Old World Species. Kew. Leeuwenberg, A. J. M. 1994. A Revision of Tabernaemontana. Two, the New World Species and Stemmadenia. Kew.
