Description:

• Annual, ± glabrous herbs with watery sap, often climbing by means of tendrils, often slightly fleshy, arising from a taproot, sometimes with one-celled hairs
• Leaves alternate, compound, pinnately to ternately divided, often ending in a tendril; petiole sometimes vaginate at base or with membranous appendages; stipules 0
• Inflorescences terminal racemes on flowering stems, pedunculate; bracteate
• Flowers bisexual, irregular or disymmetric, small
• Sepals 2, petaloid or herbaceous, often scale-like, sometimes hyaline, large and ovate, not covering petals in bud, soon deciduous
• Petals 4, outer and inner whorl very dissimilar, imbricate, ± connivent, 2 outer often saccate or spurred at base, 2 inner narrower and sometimes coherent at apex
• Stamens 2 or 4, free and opposite petals, or 6 connate into 2 bundles; filaments broad, hyaline or petaloid, nectariferous at base; anthers connivent, adhering to stigma, median anthers 2-thecous, lateral anthers 1-thecous, rounded-elliptic to oblong, dehiscing by slits
• Ovary superior, of 2 carpels, syncarpous, 1-locular, with parietal placentation; ovules 1-many, pendulous, campylotropous, bitegmic, crassinucellate; style slender; stigma 1, compressed, with 2 lobes or apical horns, and/or 2-8 papillar stigmatic surfaces
• Fruit various, capsular or a nut, sometimes bladdery or membranous
• Seeds 1-many, small, usually shiny, with or without a crest

Nomenclature:

• Fumariaceae
  • Candolle: 105 (1821)
  • Chamisso & Schlechtendal: 556 (1826), as Fumariaceae
  • Endlicher: 858 (1839), as Papaveraceae subfamily Fumarioideae
  • Fedde: 5 (1936), as Papaveraceae
  • Lidén: 42 (1986), as Fumariaceae
  • Lidén: 310 (1993), as Fumariaceae

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Genera ± 17; species ± 530; mainly in northern, temperate regions
• Southern Africa: Genera 4 (1 exotic), species 9 (2 exotic)

References:

• CANDOLLE, A.-P. DE. 1821. Fumariaceae. Regni vegetabilis systema naturale 2. Treuttel & Würtz, Paris
• CHAMISSO, L.A. VON & SCHLECHTENDAL, D.F.L. 1826. Fumariaceae. Linnaea 1
• ENDLICHER, S.L. 1839. Papaveraceae. Suborder Fumariaceae. Genera plantarum secundum ordines naturales disposita 2. Beck, Vienna
• FEDDE, F.[K.G.] 1936. Papaveraceae. Die natürlichen Pflanzenfamilien, edn 2, 17b
• LIDÉN, M. 1986. Synopsis of Fumarioideae (Papaveraceae) with a monography of the tribe Fumarieae. Opera Botanica 88
• LIDÉN, M. 1993. Fumariaceae. In K. Kubitzki, J.G. Rohwer & V. Bittrich, The families and genera of vascular plants - dicotyledons 2. Springer-Verlag, Berlin

Resources:

• Key to Fumariaceae genera

• Fumariaceae genera: