CCXXII. — THE LESSER PERIWINKLE. 
Vinca minor Linne. 
T HE Family Apocynace# , sometimes termed the Dog’s-bane Family, is a 
large, mainly tropical, group, comprising at least a thousand species in about 
I 3 ° genera. The Lesser Periwinkle ( Vinca minor Linne) marks the most northerly 
extension of the Family in Europe, being almost certainly indigenous in our southern 
counties, as also in Belgium and Holland, though often occurring farther north as 
an escape from gardens. The Family includes but few trees or herbs, being mostly 
made up of twining and trailing shrubby plants, which in Tropical forests often 
become large woody lianes. They have a milky latex which is generally an acrid 
poison ; but in several genera, such as Pandolphia and Funtumia in Africa and 
Willughbeia in the East Indies, yields valuable rubber. They have opposite, simple, 
entire leaves, and polysymrnetric, perfect flowers, often large and beautifully 
coloured, so that many of them, such as the Oleander ( Nerium Oleander Linne), 
Allamanda , and the Periwinkles, are valued in our gardens and hot-houses. The 
calyx is deeply lobed, quincuncial, and persistent ; the corolla salver-shaped or 
funnel-shaped and convolute. The stamens equal the petals in number, and are 
epipetalous and included, with very short filaments ; and there are two carpels 
which may be free or united in the ovarian region but have only one common style. 
The genus Vinca comprises some five species of slender perennial evergreen 
herbs, natives of Europe, Asia, and North Africa. Their evergreen foliage has 
given them the German names Wintergnin and Sinngriin , the Danish Singroen, and 
the sometimes-used English Sengreen ; while a mistaken derivation of the Latin 
name from sincere, to conquer, instead of from vincire, to bind, has led to the 
fanciful suggestion that this name means the conqueror of winter. Trailing habit 
and evergreen foliage together unquestionably originated the oldest name we know 
for these plants, the Greek kA^otis Ba(f}voelSy}<s, klematis daphnoeides , the laurel-like 
climber ; but Pliny’s name for it Vinca pervinca , which has given rise to most of its 
names in modern Europe, probably referred to its use for binding in chaplets. 
Pervinca occurs unaltered in Italian and in Portuguese, Pervenche in French, 
Pervenke in Chaucer, and even Barwinck in Polish. The easily-grown luxuriant 
trailing shoots with their glossy leaves and early cheerful flowers evidently made the 
Periwinkles favourites in English gardens at a remote period. The name “ Vinca, 
pervinca ” occurs in Adfric’s tenth-century Vocabulary, and according to the doctrine 
of signatures the plant was considered “ a great binder and stayeth all bleedings.” 
Dioscorides states that to be efficacious 
“ this wort must be plucked when the moon is nine nights old, or eleven, or thirteen, saying, ‘ I pray thee, Vinca pervinca/ ” 
Turner in his “Libellus ” (1538) writes : — 
“ Clematis daphnoides, Latinis vinca pervinca, anglis Perwyncle dicitur.” 
“ Clematis daphnoides is called vinca pervinca by the Latins, by the English Perwyncle.” 
