Catharanthus roseus (L.) Don

• Title

  Catharanthus roseus (L.) Don

• Authors

  Nathaniel Lord Britton, Frances W. Horne

• Scientific Name

  Catharanthus roseus (L.) G.Don

• Description

  Flora Borinqueña Catharanthus roseus Flor de todo el año Church-flower Family Apocynaceae Dogbane Family Vinca rosea Linnaeus, Systema Naturae, edition 10, 944. 1759. Catharanthus roseus G. Don, General System of Gardening and Botany 4: 95. 1838. The Spanish name of this plant, commonly grown for ornament in flower gardens, and locally abundantly naturalized in waste grounds and along roads in Porto Rico, refers to the interesting habit of bearing flowers at nearly all seasons. It is distributed nearly throughout tropical and subtropical America, north to Florida, and in the Old World tropics. The English name periwinkle is also used for this species, but belongs, properly, to the related Vinca minor, native of Europe. The original home of the plant was probably in eastern Asia. Catharanthus (Greek, pure flower) is a genus established by Don in 1838, with the species here illustrated typical; another species inhabits the East Indies, and another is Madagascar. They are herbs, or low shrubs, with opposite leaves and large axillary flowers, borne solitary, or 2 together. The calyx is 5-cleft, the corolla salverform, with 5, broad lobes; there are 5 stamens; the 2 ovaries contain many ovules; the slender styles are topped by thick, hairy stigmas. The pods are slenderly cylindric, many-seeded, the seeds small and unappendaged. Catharanthus roseus (rose-colored, referring to the pink flowers, but they sometimes are white), is herbaceous, but somewhat woody, upright, usually branched, hairy, from 0.3 to 0.8 meter high. The short-stalked leaves are oblong, or broader above the middle than below, from 3 to 8 centimeters long, blunt or notched, and minutely tipped. The flower-stalks are very short; the very narrow calyx-lobes are 3 or 4 millimeters long and hairy; the pink, or white corolla has a finely hairy tube from 2 to 2.5 centimeters long, its oblique lobes somewhat shorter. The hairy pods are from 2 to 3 centimeters long, borne 2 together, longitudinally several-grooved.