Common Name: DOGBANE FAMILY
Habit: Annual, perennial herb, shrub, tree, often vine; sap generally milky. Leaf: simple, alternate, opposite, subwhorled to whorled, entire; stipules 0 or small, finger-like. Inflorescence: axillary or terminal, cyme, generally umbel- or raceme-like, or flowers 1--2. Flower: bisexual, radial; perianth parts, especially petals, overlapped, twisted to right or left, at least in bud; sepals generally 5, fused at base, often reflexed, persistent; petals generally 5, fused in basal +- 1/2; stamens generally 5, attached to corolla tube or throat, alternate lobes, free or fused to form filament column and anther head, filament column then generally with 5 free or fused, +- elaborate appendages abaxially, pollen +- free or removed in pairs of pollinia; nectaries 0 or near ovaries, then 2 or 5[10], or in stigmatic chambers; ovaries 2, superior or +- so, free [fused]; style tips, stigmas generally fused into massive pistil head. Fruit: 1--2 follicles, (capsule), [berry, drupe]. Seed: many, often with tuft of hairs at 1 or both ends.
Genera In Family: 200--450 genera, 3000--5000 species: all continents, especially tropics, subtropical South America, southern Africa; many ornamental (including Asclepias, Hoya, Nerium, Plumeria, Stapelia); cardiac glycosides, produced by some members formerly treated in Asclepiadaceae, used as arrow poisons, in medicine to control heart function, and by various insects for defense. Note: Asclepiadaceae ("asclepiads"), although monophyletic, included in Apocynaceae because otherwise the latter is paraphyletic. Complexity of floral structure, variation in asclepiads arguably greatest among all angiosperms. Pattern of carpel fusion (carpels free in ovule-bearing region, fused above), present +- throughout Apocynaceae (in broad sense), nearly unknown in other angiosperms. Base chromosome number generally 11; abundance of latex, generally small size of chromosomes evidently have impeded cytological investigations.
eFlora Treatment Author: Thomas J. Rosatti, except as noted
Scientific Editor: Bruce G. Baldwin.

Common Name: BLADDER-FLOWER
Habit: Perennial herb. Stem: twining. Leaf: opposite; blade cordate, hastate, or ovate. Inflorescence: at nodes, raceme- or panicle-like cyme. Flower: sepals large, leaf-like, +- erect; corolla +- erect (exceeding stamens, pistils), ring of tissue at base 0; filament column appendages free, attached to base of filament column and base of corolla, without projections, margins converging but not nearly meeting abaxially, anthers fused into anther head around and fused to pistil head, pollen in pollinia; nectaries in stigmatic chambers. Fruit: pendent, generally ovoid, with coarse longitudinal grooves.
Etymology: (António de Araújo de Azevedo, Portuguese statesman, 1752--1817)
eFlora Treatment Author: Thomas J. Rosatti & Carol A. Hoffman
Reference: Forster & Bruyns 2001 Taxon 41:746--749
Unabridged Reference: Liede-Schumann & Meve 2006 http://www.uni-bayreuth.de/departments/planta2/research/databases/delta_as/www/araujia.htm; Spellman & Gunn 1976 Castanea 41:139--148