13. Vinca Linnaeus, Sp. Pl. 1: 209. 1753; Gen. Pl. ed. 5, 98. 1754.
[I]
Periwinkle [Derivation uncertain; probably Latin vinco, to conquer, or vincio, to bind, alluding to binding and subduing other plants in its habitat]
David E. Lemke
Suffrutescent herbs [subshrubs]; latex milky. Stems trailing or ascending [erect], unarmed, glabrous or eglandular-pubescent. Leaves persistent [deciduous], opposite, petiolate; stipular colleters absent; laminar colleters absent. Inflorescences axillary, 1(–4)-flowered, pedunculate. Flowers: calycine colleters absent; corolla blue-purple, blue-violet, violet, reddish purple, or white, rarely pale blue, rotate-funnelform, aestivation sinistrorse; corolline corona absent; androecium and gynoecium not united into a gynostegium; stamens inserted at top of corolla tube; anthers connivent, not adherent to stigma, connectives appendiculate, locules 4; pollen free, not massed into pollinia, translators absent; nectaries 2. Fruits follicles, usually paired, erect, brown, slender, terete to somewhat moniliform, surface striate, glabrous. Seeds narrowly ovoid to elliptic, navicular, not winged, not beaked, not comose, not arillate. x = 23.
Species 7 (2 in the flora): introduced; Europe, w Asia; introduced also widely.
Several species of Vinca are widely cultivated as ornamentals throughout Europe and North America, but only two of these are treated as naturalized elements of our flora. Vinca herbacea Waldstein & Kitaibel has been collected several times from northwestern Massachusetts but is here considered a waif; it can be distinguished from V. major and V. minor by the entirely herbaceous growth habit, scabrous (versus ciliate or glabrous) leaf margins, and corolla lobes less than 6 mm wide.
In Europe, species of Vinca have long been associated with death, being commonly planted in cemeteries and, during the Middle Ages, used in the making of wreaths that were sometimes worn as a crown by condemned persons on their way to execution.
SELECTED REFERENCE Stearn, W. T. 1973. A synopsis of the genus Vinca including its taxonomic and nomenclatural history. In: W. I. Taylor and N. R. Farnsworth, eds. 1973. The Vinca Alkaloids. Botany, Chemistry, and Pharmacology. New York. Pp. 1–94.
