Description :

• Perennial herbs or undershrubs, often acaulescent, with taproot
• Leaves usually 3-pinnate or multifid, with ultimate lobes filiform to ovate, rarely simple and grass-like
• Flowers usually in many-rayed umbels; involucres of few to many bracts
• Calyx with 5 small or rudimentary teeth
• Petals obovate, oblanceolate or cuneate, ± emarginate, inflexed at apex, keeled on face
• Disc mostly conical, sometimes crenate
• Stamens slightly longer than petals; filaments subterete; anthers ovate
• Styles short, thick
• Fruit dorsally flattened, sometimes biconvex, capped with persistent disc and styles, ribbed, with a narrow, flattened margin, or winged, glabrous; mericarps slightly convex on the back, flat, concave or channelled on face, 3-veined on back, usually winged on margins; oil ducts conspicuous, usually 6, 2 on inner face, rarely 10, and 4 on face; carpophore divided
• Seeds oblong, linear or planoconvex in cross section
• x = 11 (6, 9, 10, 13) (polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• Peucedanum L.
  • Linnaeus: 245 (1753)
  • Linnaeus: 116 (1754)
  • Sonder: 553 (1862)
  • Burtt: 227 (1991)
  • Pimenov & Leonov: 87 (1993)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global : Species ± 120, Eurasia and Africa
• Southern Africa : Species 31 or more, widespread