Yellow Oleander

Cultivated for medicine. The sap and seeds are deadly poison-ous to domestic animals. The seeds yield oil for industry and soap making. The bark is a powerful antiperiodic and febrifuge. A handsome ornamental.

Trees to 6 m tall. Bark chocolate-brown, lenticellate; lower branches pendulous, young branches greenish gray. Petiole ca. 3 mm; leaf blades lustrous green adaxially, light green abaxially, very narrowly oblong, 10-15 X 0.5-1.2 cm, somewhat leathery, glabrous, apex acuminate, lateral veins obscure. Pedicel 2.5-5 cm. Flowers fragrant. Sepals green, narrowly triangular, apex acuminate. Corolla 6-7 X 4.5-5.5 cm; tube 4-5 cm, shorter than lobes; corona scales present, connected by a transverse row of long white hairs, lobes obliquely obovate. Drupes compressed triangular-globose, 2.5-4 cm in diam. Seeds light gray, lenticular, ca. 2 X 3.5 cm. Fl. May-Dec. 2n = 20.

A large shrub or small tree reaching 6-7 m, stem and branches glabrous, more or less corky, lactiferous. Leaves spiral or alternate, crowded linear-lanceolate, acute or shortly acuminate, attenuate at base, 8-15 x 1 cm, bright green and shining above, sub-coriaceous, margin slightly recurved, midrib prominent, lateral nerves obscure, subsessile, with glands in the axils. Inflorescence of few flowered cymes, generally terminal, peduncle very short, bracts variable, caducous. Flowers yellow or orange, pedicel c. 7.5 (-3) cm long, bracteoles deltoid-elongated, c. 2 mm long, with glands at the axil. Calyx 6-7.5 mm long, glabrous, persistent, divided nearly upto the base; lobes long acuminate, spreading. Corolla c. 5 cm long, tubular at the base, campanulate at the throat, hairy; corona present, pubescent, opposite and above the stamen, tube 12-15 mm long, lobes 3-3.5 x 1.7 cm, obovate; Disc thick, cup shaped; ovules 2 in each carpel, stigma broad angular, Fruit somewhat rhomboid, 3 cm long. Seeds 2(-4), c. 1 cm long.

Distribution: A native of Tropical America, commonly cultivated in Pakistan.

Native of tropical America; widely naturalised elsewhere in the tropics.

130-1000 m

Fl. Per.: Throughout the year.

Fujian, Guangdong, Guangxi, Hainan, Taiwan, Yunnan [native to Central and South America]

Cerbera peruviana Persoon, Syn. Pl. 1: 267. 1805; Cascabela thevetia (Linnaeus) Lippold; Cerbera thevetia Linnaeus; Thevetia linearis A. de Candolle; T. neriifolia Jussieu ex Steudel, nom. invalid.; T. neriifolia Jussieu ex A. de Candolle; T. thevetia (Linnaeus) Millspaugh.