Apiaceae or Umbelliferae

Abstract

Apiaceae or Umbelliferae, commonly known as celery, carrot, or parsley family, in the order of Apiales, is a family of dicotyledonous flowering plants, consisting of about 434 genera with approximately 3700 species, widely distributed in temperate or tropical zones. Plants are annual or perennial herbs, rarely woody at base, and caulescent or acaulescent. Stems are usually hollow or solid and striate. Leaves are alternate and rarely opposite or basal. Blades are compound, sometimes simple, much incise or divided, pinnatifid to pinnatisect, or ternate-pinnately decompound. Petioles are usually sheathing at base. Stipules are absent. Flowers are epigynous, small, bisexual or staminate (unisexual male), regular, and in simple or compound umbels. Umbellules are few to numerous-flowered. Rays are often subtended by bracts forming an involucre. Umbellules are usually subtended by bracteoles, forming an involucel. Pedicels are long, short, or obsolete. Calyx tubes are wholly andante to the ovary. Calyx teeth (sepals) are small or obsolete, forming a ring around the top of the ovary. Ovary is inferior, 2-celled, with one anatropous ovule in each locule. Styles are two, usually swollen at the base, forming a stylopodium which often secretes nectar. Two mericarps are united by their faces (commissure) and usually attached to a central axis (carpophore). Mericarps are separated at maturity. Each mericarp is with one seed and splitting apart at maturity. Seed face (commissural albumen) is plane and concave to sulcate. Eleven species, belonging to ten genera, are illustrated in this chapter.