736 Apocynaceae. 
and few-flowered; flowers subsessile, white or tinged with pink. 
Berries often edible. 
About 18 species, in the tropics of the Old World, extratropical 
South Africa and Australia. 
1040. Carissa edulis Vahl Symb. I (1790), p. 22. — DOC. 
Prodrom. VIII, p. 334. — Carissa Candolleana Jaub. and Spach 
Illustr. Flor. Or. V, tab. 497. — Carissa cornifolia and Carissa 
Richardiana Jaub. and Spach Illustr. Flor. Orient. V, tab.498 and 
496. — Arduina edulis Spreng. System. J, p.669. — A very much 
branched straggling or climbing shrub, glabrous, or young branches 
with short spreading hairs but soon glabrescent; spines simple, 
straight or recurved, 2—5 cm long, rarely almost suppressed. Leaves 
ovate to ovate-elliptic or sublanceolate, rarely orbicular, 18—50 ram 
long, 18—36 mm broad, sometimes much smaller, rounded at the 
base or subcuneate, acute and often mucronate, rarely obtuse, 
coriaceous, glabrous or very soon glabrescent; nerves 3—d, faint 
on both sides; petiole 2—2'/, mm long. Calyx 2'/,—5 mm long; 
sepals lanceolate, acuminate, ciliolate, glabrous or puberulous. Corolla 
white or purple, or purple turning white, glabrous or minutely hairy 
at the mouth and on the inner surface of the lobes, 10—20 (rarely 
8—9) mm long; lobes ovate or oblong, acute, 2'/,—8 mm long. 
Berry globose, purple to black, 4—5 mm in diam., edible. Seeds 
2—4. — Flow. January. 
M. ma. Alexandria, often in gardens; Mandara, some wild 
specimens. 
Also known from Arabia, Socotra and Tropical Africa. 
420. (2.) Vinea Linn. 
Little shrubs, rarely herbs with opposite, entire leaves, and blue, 
pink, or white flowers, growing singly on axillary peduncles. Calyx 
free, deeply divided into 5 narrow divisions. Corolla with a cylindrical 
or almost campanulate tube, and a flat, spreading limb, with 5 broad, 
oblique segments, twisted in the bud. Stamens 5, enclosed in the tube. 
Ovaries 2, distinct at the base but connected at the top by a single 
style, terminating in an oblong stigma, contracted in the middle. 
Fruit consisting of 2 oblong or elongated capsules or follicles, each 
of a single cell, of a greenish colour, diverging as they ripen, and 
opening by a longitudinal slit on the inner side. Seeds several, 
without the seed-down of many other genera of the Order. 
A genus widely distributed in the temperate regions of the world. 
