Petrea volubilis Illustration Credit: Fauzia

Lianes, shrubs or trees, with opposite-decussate or verticellate, coriaceous, entire leaves and terminal or axillary racemes. Flowers slightly zygomorphic, violet, blue or white, pedicellate. Calyx-tube campanulate, 5-lobed with, 5 scales in the throat; lobes coloured, longer than tube. Corolla-tube short, cylindric, urceolate or infundibuliform; limb 5-lobed with unequal, brightly coloured lobes. Stamens 4, didynamous, inserted at the middle of corolla tube, not exserted. Ovary 1-carpellary by abortion, 2-locular, with 1 ovule in each locule; style simple with capitate, 2-lobed stigma. Fruit a drupe, enclosed within persistent, hardened calyx.

A tropical American and west Indian genus with c. 30 species; represented here by a single; cultivated species.

Lower Taxon

• Petrea volubilis Linn.