Fumarioideae is a subfamily of the

family Family (from la, familia) is a Social group, group of people related either by consanguinity (by recognized birth) or Affinity (law), affinity (by marriage or other relationship). The purpose of the family is to maintain the well-being of its ...

Papaveraceae The Papaveraceae are an economically important family of about 42 genera and approximately 775 known species of flowering plants in the order Ranunculales, informally known as the poppy family. The family is cosmopolitan, occurring in temperat ...

(the poppy family). It was formerly treated as a separate family, the Fumariaceae (the fumitory, fumewort or bleeding-heart family). It consists of about 575 species of

herbaceous Herbaceous plants are vascular plants that have no persistent woody stems above ground. This broad category of plants includes many perennials, and nearly all annuals and biennials. Definitions of "herb" and "herbaceous" The fourth edition of t ...

plants Plants are predominantly Photosynthesis, photosynthetic eukaryotes of the Kingdom (biology), kingdom Plantae. Historically, the plant kingdom encompassed all living things that were not animals, and included algae and fungi; however, all curr ...

in 20 genera, native to the

Northern Hemisphere The Northern Hemisphere is the half of Earth that is north of the Equator. For other planets in the Solar System, north is defined as being in the same celestial hemisphere relative to the invariable plane of the solar system as Earth's Nort ...

and

South Africa South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the southernmost country in Africa. It is bounded to the south by of coastline that stretch along the South Atlantic and Indian Oceans; to the north by the neighbouring countri ...

. The largest genus is ''

Corydalis ''Corydalis'' (from Greek ''korydalís'' "crested lark") is a genus of about 470 species of annual and perennial herbaceous plants in the family Papaveraceae, native to the temperate Northern Hemisphere and the high mountains of tropical eastern ...

'' (with 470 species).

Description

Flower shape

Plants in the fumitory subfamily are easily recognised by their peculiar flowers with two dissimilar pairs of petals. One or both of the outer petals is usually spurred, and the inner petals are connected at tip. There are two types of flowers. A given genus has one type or the other. ''

Dicentra ''Dicentra'' ( Greek ''dís'' "twice", ''kéntron'' "spur"), known as bleeding-hearts, is a genus of eight species of herbaceous plants with oddly shaped flowers and finely divided leaves, native to eastern Asia and North America. Description F ...

'' has flowers with two planes of symmetry, and ''

'' has flowers with one plane of symmetry (

zygomorphic Floral symmetry describes whether, and how, a flower, in particular its perianth, can be divided into two or more identical or mirror-image parts. Uncommonly, flowers may have no axis of symmetry at all, typically because their parts are spirall ...

Leaves

Most species have

compound leaves A leaf ( : leaves) is any of the principal appendages of a vascular plant stem, usually borne laterally aboveground and specialized for photosynthesis. Leaves are collectively called foliage, as in "autumn foliage", while the leaves, ste ...

Taxonomy

The

APG IV system The APG IV system of flowering plant classification is the fourth version of a modern, mostly molecular-based, system of plant taxonomy for flowering plants (angiosperms) being developed by the Angiosperm Phylogeny Group (APG). It was publishe ...

of 2016 (unchanged from the earlier 1998

APG system The APG system (Angiosperm Phylogeny Group system) of plant classification is the first version of a modern, mostly molecular-based, system of plant taxonomy. Published in 1998 by the Angiosperm Phylogeny Group, it was replaced by the improved AP ...

, the 2003

APG II system The APG II system (Angiosperm Phylogeny Group II system) of plant classification is the second, now obsolete, version of a modern, mostly molecular-based, system of plant taxonomy that was published in April 2003 by the Angiosperm Phylogeny Gro ...

, and the

APG III system The APG III system of flowering plant classification is the third version of a modern, mostly molecular-based, system of plant taxonomy being developed by the Angiosperm Phylogeny Group (APG). Published in 2009, it was superseded in 2016 by a fur ...

of 2009) includes the former family Fumariaceae within the

. The APG II system provided for its optional segregation as a separate family, but this option is not provided in the current APG IV system or the APG III system.

Genera

There are 20 genera:

External links