University of Wisconsin-Madison | Botany Plant Growth Facilities
Botanical Garden
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Apiaceae + Araliaceae
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Defining Features: The family is defined by its distinctive inflorescence, the umbel, which gives the group the alternate name 'the Umbelliferae'. Many species are biennial, producing the vegetables eaten by humans in their second season of growth. There are often prickly. Defining Morphology: Floral Features: Inflorescences are determinate, terminal and often umbellate and rarely heads. Flowers 5-merous with usually minute calyx and often with yellow or white corolla. Style located on stylopodium (swollen nectariferous base). Flowers are usually bisexual and actinomorphic or unisexual (plants are monoecious or dioecious). Ovaries are often inferior with axile placentation. Fruit and Seed Features: Dicotyledon. Fruit is a schizocarp with 2 mericarps, berry or drupe. Fruits are ribbed or winged and may be covered with prickles or tubercles. Vegetative Features: Habit as aromatic herbs, lianas, shrubs or trees. Stems are often hollow between the internodes. Leaves are alternate, simple or pinnately to palmately compound with sheathing bases. Leaves have entire, lobed or serrate margin. Often leaf scar (from fallen leaf) is large and prominent. Leaves are either stipulate or estipulate. Distribution: Almost entirelycosmopolitan. Economic Use: As an abundant source of foods and spices including carrots, parsnip, chervil, dill, celery, caraway, parsley and anise. Many species are poisonous and this family is also the source of Hemlock, the poison with which Socrates took his life. Panax or ginseng has an important medicinal root. Hedera helix (ivy) and Schefflera are important as indoor and outdoor ornamentals. Number of Genera Globally: 460 Number of Species Globally: 4,250 |
Comments, Questions, Desire to Support: Contact Mo Fayyaz, Greenhouse/Garden Director.
File last updated: 2011.
Copyright © 2004 The Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System.
