(2006) Apocynaceae, Flora of Somalia 3:117

Plants trees, shrubs, lianas, or herbs, most with white or clear latex, some with succulent stems. Leaves usually opposite, sometimes alternate or whorled, simple, entire. Inflorescences cymose, cymes sometimes grouped into panicles. Flowers bisexual, radially symmetric or almost so, (4)5-merous. Calyx with imbricate lobes. Corolla tubular, the lobes contorted, valvate, or imbricate. Corona often present. arising from the corolla or the gynostegium or both. Stamens attached to the corolla tube; anthers connivent around, coherent with, or fused to the stigmatic head, the fused head and anthers forming a gynostegium; pollen shed as monads, tetrads, or in pollinia that are on translaters of in pollinaria.  Ovary usually superior, sometimes partly inferior, bicarpellate, 1-celled and with 2 parietal placentae, 2-celled and with axile placentae, or forming two separate follicles united by the stigmatice head.  Fruits dry or fleshy, forming a capsule or two follicles; seeds often with tuft(s) of hairs, usually with endosperm.   

Apocynaceae constitute a primarily tropical family of about 400 genera and 5000 species. Many species have medicinal value or are poisonous and several are popular ornamentals. Since publication of the Flora of Somalia, there is strong support for expanding Ceropegia to include many of the genera recognized in that treatment. Some of the included genera are still recognized but at a lower taxonomic level; others are split up.

Key to genera of the Apocynaceae as published in the Flora of Somalia.

Key to the genera of the Apocynaceae in Somaliland and Somalia based on the expanded view of  Ceropegia.

©Trustees of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew; reproduced with permission. 

Plants of the World Online (POWO): Apocynaceae. The distribution map shows the countries where the taxon is considered native or introduced but is now growing in the wild. 

Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF):  Apocynaceae. Records may be of cultivated specimens.

 

Endress M.E., S. Liede-Schumann, and U. Meve (2014) An updated classification for Apocynaceae. Phytotaxa 159 (3) https://doi.org/10.11646/phytotaxa.159.3.2 [not open access]