Description:

• Annual, biennial or perennial herbs, glabrous or variously hairy or glandular-hairy, sometimes prickly, usually from taproots, with clear, white, yellow or orange-coloured, often sticky, latex in laticifers in all parts except seeds
• Leaves alternate, basal and/or cauline, simple or multifid, pinnately veined, entire to much divided, petiolate or sessile with sometimes amplexicaul base, sometimes spiny; stipules 0
• Inflorescences axillary or terminal, sometimes cymose but usually flowers solitary; bracts usually present
• Flowers bisexual, regular, hypogynous, rarely perigynous (*Eschscholzia), conspicuous and large, pedicellate or sessile; buds erect or often nodding before anthesis
• Sepals 2 or 3, in 1 whorl, free, rarely connate, usually caducous
• Petals 4-6(-8), free, usually in 2 whorls of 2 or 3, usually caducous, spreading, imbricate and often crumpled in bud, white, yellow, red, pink or purple
• Stamens many, free, arising centripetally; filaments filiform, clavate or laterally expanded; anthers 2-thecous, tetrasporangiate, basifixed, opening lengthwise, erect
• Ovary superior, of 2-24 fused carpels, sometimes carpels with free tips, 1- or 2-locular or rarely multilocular by intrusion of placentas; ovules many, on parietal placentas, anatropous to subcampylotropous, bitegmic, crassinucellate; style 0 or short; stigmas often sessile, as many as carpels and placentas, radiating
• Fruit a dehiscent capsule, opening by valves or pores
• Seeds usually many, small, with crested or smooth raphe; testa often sculptured; endosperm oily or rarely granular; embryo often ± rudimentary

Nomenclature:

• Papaveraceae
  • Jussieu: 235 (1789)
  • Bentham: 49 (1862)
  • Fedde: 1 (1909)
  • Fedde: 5 (1936)
  • Brückner: 361 (1983)
  • Kadereit: 494 (1993)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Genera ± 23, with ± 240 species, distributed mainly in temperate areas of the northern hemisphere of both the Old and New World, and extending into Central and South America
• Southern Africa: Genera 4 (3 exotic), species ± 8 (only 1 indigenous). Many species of Poppy (Papaver L.) are cultivated as ornamentals and a few species have escaped and become very locally established. Two species of *Argemone are well established aliens

References:

• BENTHAM, G. 1862. Papaveraceae. In G. Bentham & J.D. Hooker, Genera plantarum 1. Lovell Reeve & Co., London
• BRÜCKNER, C. 1983. Zur Morphologie der Samenschale in den Papaveraceae Juss. s.str. und Hypecoaceae (Prantl et Kündig) Nak. Feddes Repertorium 94
• FEDDE, F. 1909. Papaveraceae-Hypecoideae et Papaveraceae-Papaveroideae. Das Pflanzenreich, Heft 40 (4,104)
• FEDDE, F.F. 1936. Papaveraceae. Die natürlichen Pflanzenfamilien, edn 2,17b
• JUSSIEU, A.L. DE. 1789. Papaveraceae, les Papaveracées. Genera plantarum secundum ordines naturales disposita 2. Herissant & Barrois, Paris
• KADEREIT, J.W. 1993. Papaveraceae. In K. Kubitzki, J.G. Rohwer & V. Bittrich, The families and genera of vascular plants - dicotyledons 2. Springer-Verlag, Berlin

Resources:

• Key to Papaveraceae genera

• Papaveraceae genera: