Póster White Plumeria Blossoms

"White Plumeria Blossoms" by Catherine Sherman. Beautiful white plumeria flowers with yellow throats bloom in the Florida Keys. Plumeria is a genus of tropical flowering plants in the dogbane family, Apocynaceae. Most species are deciduous shrubs or small trees. Various plumeria are indigenous to Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean, and as far south as Brazil. Plumeria are beautiful additions to landscapes in warm regions. Common names for plants in the genus vary widely according to region, variety, and whim, but Frangipani or variations on that theme are the most common. Plumeria also is used directly as a common name, especially in horticultural circles. The genus is named in honor of the seventeenth-century French botanist Charles Plumier, who traveled to the New World documenting many plant and animal species. The common name "frangipani" comes from a sixteenth-century marquis of the noble family in Italy who claimed to invent a plumeria-scented perfume, but actually made a synthetic perfume that was said at the time to resemble the odor of the recently discovered flowers.