Description:

• Erect, twining or scrambling perennial herbs or shrubs, often with prostrate or tuberous rhizomes or rootstocks
• Leaves alternate, entire or 2-7-lobed, cordate, 3-7-nerved, petiolate, conduplicate in bud; stipules 0 but an axillary bud often producing a clasping, broadly reniform leaf (pseudostipule)
• Flowers bisexual, irregular, epigynous, solitary or in fascicles, axillary, with or without bracts
• Perianth simple, fused to form a straight, curved, or S-shaped, coloured tube, inflated at basal part (utricle), then contracted or narrowed above in a cylindrical to funnel-shaped part (tube), gradually elongated, enlarged and expanded into the 1-lipped or (1-6)-lobed limb, often with dark reddish or brownish colour and foetid smell; inside of utricle often provided with 2(-6) glandular bodies
• Stamens usually 6 or more; filaments scarcely distinguishable from column; anthers sessile and adnate to style column in a gynostemium, 4-celled, dehiscing longitudinally
• Ovary inferior, 3-6-carpellate, oblong or elongate, slightly 6-angular and 5- or 6-locular; placentation axile; ovules many, anatropous; styles 3, 5 or 6, marginally connate, fleshy, with coroniform to subcapitate stigmatic lobes
• Fruit a capsule, septicidally dehiscent, with 6 valves or splitting through placentas, obovoid to short-cylindrical
• Seeds usually many, ovate, deltoid or triangular, compressed, mostly winged all round or thick with an elaiosome; testa crustaceous or hard, finely verrucose or smooth; embryo well developed but minute; endosperm abundant, oily, starch-free
• x = 7 (4, 5, 6, 8, 13) (polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• *Aristolochiaceae
  • Jussieu: 72 (1789)
  • Endlicher: 344 (1837)
  • Duchartre: 421 (1864)
  • Bentham: 121 (1880)
  • Solereder: 264 (1889)
  • Schmidt: 201 (1935)
  • Huber: 277 (1985)
  • Huber: 129 (1993)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Genera ± 12, with 450-500 species, with a pantropical, an Indomalayan, and a holarctic branch
• Southern Africa: Genera 1, species 2 (introduced)

References:

• BENTHAM, G. 1880. Aristolochiaceae. In G. Bentham & J. D. Hooker, Genera plantarum 3. Lovell Reeve & Co., London
• DUCHARTRE, P. 1864. Aristolochiaceae. In A. de Candolle, Prodromus 15,1. Masson & Sons, Paris
• ENDLICHER, S.L. 1837. Aristolochieae. Genera plantarum secundum ordines naturales disposita 1. Beck, Vienna
• HUBER, H. 1985. Samenmerkmale und Gliederung der Aristolochiaceen. Botanische Jahrbücher 107
• HUBER, H. 1993. Aristolochiaceae. In K. Kubitzki, J.G. Rohwer & V. Bittrich, The families and genera of vascular plants - dicotyledons 2. Springer-Verlag, Berlin
• JUSSIEU, A.L. DE. 1789. Aristolochiae. Genera plantarum secundum ordines naturales disposita 2. Herissant & Barrois, Paris
• SCHMIDT, O.C. 1935. Aristolochiaceae. Die natürlichen Pflanzenfamilien 2,16b
• SOLEREDER, H. 1889. Aristolochiaceae. Die natürlichen Pflanzenfamilien III,1

Resources:

• Aristolochiaceae genus: *Aristolochia