Interspecific Morphological Variations within the Species Adenium obesum and Nerium oleander

Taxonomy of Angiosperms

Adenium obesum (Forssk.) Roem. & Schult. and Nerium oleander L. is an ornamental plant, and it belongs to the family Apocynaceae. It produces a lot of flowers in the summer, but they can bloom throughout the year. In this study, we performed interspecific morphological characteristics of Adenium obesum and Nerium oleander. Research was conducted in Kanyakumari District, Tamil Nadu, India. Adenium obesum and Nerium oleander have lots of cultivars, but the present study we choose light pink color (3 whorls) cultivars in both species. The cultivars were selected based on similar color and number of whorls. From this study, interspecific morphological variations were observed among the species Adenium obesum and Nerium oleander. The color and quantity of floral whorls were the two most significant morphological similarities seen in both species. The results of the current investigation showed that the Nerium oleander has the largest leaves and the Adenium obesum has the smallest leaves. The species are distinguished based on both vegetative and floral morphological characteristics. It aims at utilizing the methods of classical as well as experimental taxonomy to resolve the systematic position and inter-relationship of the patterns of diversity exhibited by the species.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.