Description:

• Herbs, annual or perennial, often with a tuberous rootstock, occasionally shrubs or trees, often aromatic
• Leaves usually alternate, rarely opposite, often radical, usually with a sheathing petiole, variously divided or sometimes simple; stipules 0
• Flowers usually small, regular and bisexual, rarely unisexual, in simple or compound umbels, rarely heads subtended by involucres, rarely without
• Calyx with tube adnate to ovary, with (usually 5) or without lobes
• Petals 5, free, inserted on margin of disc, usually with inflexed apices and keeled on inner face, soon falling
• Disc expanded, depressed or conical, with entire or crenate margin
• Stamens 5, alternating with petals; filaments inflexed in bud; anthers 2-thecous, opening laterally
• Ovary inferior, (1)2(3)-locular, with a single, pendulous ovule in each locule; styles 2, short or long, free, sometimes with a thickened base (stylopodium)
• Fruit a dry schizocarp, usually crowned with calyx, disc and styles; fruit splitting down a septum (commissure) into 2 single-seeded, indehiscent mericarps, at first joined by their (commissural, inner) faces, and mostly suspended from a common, slender, divided or unbranched stalk (carpophore) derived from main vascular strand of fruit; mericarps typically with 5 primary ribs: 1 dorsal, 2 lateral, 2 commissural, and between them 4 secondary ridges, all running longitudinally from base to stylar end of fruit; mericarps either similar (homomorphic) or different (heteromorphic) in shape, sometimes winged, glabrous, villous, or spiny, usually with intervallecular vittae (oil ducts in furrows between ribs), or vittae sometimes intrajugal (within ribs)
• Seeds various

Nomenclature:

• Apiaceae
  • Sonder: 524 (1862)
  • Drude: 63 (1898)
  • Schreiber: 1 (1967)
  • Cannon: 555 (1978)
  • Burtt: 133 (1991)
  • Pimenov & Leonov: 1 (1993)
  • Plunkett, Soltis & Soltis: 565 (1997)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Genera ± 453; species over 3750, cosmopolitan, mainly in temperate regions
• Southern Africa: Genera 41 (8 naturalised), species 152 (15 naturalised). The following genera and species are encountered as rare escapes and are not included in the key and descriptions:
  • *Caucalis L. - the only species: *C. platycarpos L., is a cosmopolitan weed of Europe
  • *Pastinaca L. - a genus of 14 species from Europe and Asia; 1 species: *P. sativa L., the cultivated Parsnip, occurs as an occasional escape in moist situations
  • *Petroselinum Hill - *P. crispum (Mill.) A.W. Hill, the cultivated herb Parsley, is an occasional escape.

References:

• BURTT, B.L. 1991. Umbelliferae of southern Africa: an introduction and annotated checklist. Edinburgh Journal of Botany 48
• CANNON, J.F.M. 1978. Umbelliferae. Flora zambesiaca 4
• DRUDE, O. 1898. Umbelliferae. Die natürlichen Pflanzenfamilien 3,8
• PIMENOV, M.G. & LEONOV, M.V. 1993. The genera of the Umbelliferae. A nomenclator. Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew
• PLUNKETT, G.M., SOLTIS, D.E. & SOLTIS, P.S. 1997. Clarification of the relationship between Apiaceae and Araliaceae based on MATK and RBCL sequence data. American Journal of Botany 84
• SCHREIBER, A. 1967. Apiaceae. Prodromus einer Flora von Südwestafrika 103
• SONDER, W. 1862. Umbelliferae. Flora capensis 2

Resources:

• Classification of Apiaceae
• Key to Apiaceae genera

• Apiaceae genera: