Luontoportti

In Finland the feral division of the Dogbane family is represented by one genus and one species. The Latin name of the family was previously Asclepiadaceae, snake-bite herbs, and the genus’s current name Vincetoxicum and the species name hirundinaria, in English swallow-wort. In new classifications the family is seen as the Asclepiadoideae sub-family and attached to the fairly large Dogbane family, which has 400 genera and over 5,000 species around the world. The change did not cause many ripples in Finland, and swallow-wort is still the family’s only genuinely feral representative. A second member of the Dogbane family that grows in Finland is lesser periwinkle (Vinca minor), which is an escape from cultivation.