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Electronic Flora of South Australia genus Fact Sheet

Family: Apiaceae
Apium

Citation: L., Sp. Pl. 264 (1753).

Derivation: Latin for celery.

Synonymy: Not Applicable

Common name: None

Description:
Annual, biennial or perennial glabrous herbs; stems erect or prostrate, sometimes rooting at the nodes, sulcate with hollow or solid internodes; leaves pinnate, the upper ternate.

Umbels compound, terminal and leaf-opposed, pedunculate or sessile; involucre and involucel absent; flowers bisexual, sepals minute or absent; petals white, ovate, inflexed at the apex, not emarginate; stamens 5; ovary glabrous; stylopodium short-conical to depressed.

Fruit a schizocarp, subglobular, ovoid or elliptic-oblong, laterally compressed, glabrous; carpophore thick, shortly 2-fid; mericarps with 5 almost equal prominent rather stout ribs; vittae solitary.

Distribution:  A cosmopolitan genus, about 20 species; 3 or 4 species indigenous and 1 naturalised in Australia. (P. Short (1979) J. Adelaide Bot. Gard. 1:205-235.)

Biology: No text

Key to Species:
1. Prostrate biennial or perennial herb; mericarps almost covered by thick corky ribs leaving only very narrow furrows between them
A. prostratum 3.
1. Erect annual or biennial herb; mericarps with thin ribs leaving distinct furrows (valleculae) between them
 
2. Annual c. 3-15 cm tall; mericarps with ribs about as thick as the valleculae are wide
A. annuum 1.
2. Stout biennial, c. 30-100 cm tall; mericarps with ribs much narrower than the valleculae between them
A. graveolens 2.

Author: Not yet available


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