Valerianaceae Batsch

Scientific Description

Common name. Valerian Family.

Habit and leaf form. Herbs (mostly), or shrubs (a few); bearing essential oils (in rhizomes and roots). Annual to perennial; plants with a basal concentration of leaves, or with neither basal nor terminal concentrations of leaves; when perennial, rhizomatous (the rhizome usually strongly scented). Stem growth conspicuously sympodial, or not conspicuously sympodial. Helophytic to mesophytic. Leaves opposite; petiolate; connate to not connate; foetid (from mono- and sesquiterpenoid essential oils), or without marked odour; simple, or compound, or simple and compound; when compound, pinnate. Leaf blades when simple dissected, or entire; flat; when simple/dissected, pinnatifid; pinnately veined; cross-venulate. Leaves without stipules; without a persistent basal meristem. Leaf anatomy. Hydathodes present (occasionally), or absent. Stem anatomy. Nodes tri-lacunar. Secondary thickening developing from a conventional cambial ring.

Reproductive type, pollination. Fertile flowers hermaphrodite, or hermaphrodite, functionally male, and functionally female. Unisexual flowers present, or absent. Plants hermaphrodite, or polygamomonoecious. Entomophilous.

Inflorescence and flower features. Flowers aggregated in ‘inflorescences’; in cymes, in corymbs, and in panicles. The terminal inflorescence unit cymose. Inflorescences dichotomous cymes, close corymbs etc, not heads; without involucral bracts. Flowers bracteate (usually); usually bracteolate; small; fragrant to malodorous (often sickly-sweet); somewhat irregular to very irregular; zygomorphic. The floral asymmetry involving the perianth and involving the androecium. Flowers cyclic; tetracyclic. Free hypanthium absent. Perianth with distinct calyx and corolla (the calyx usually much reduced at anthesis, but often developing later into a pappus); when determinable, 3–10; 2 -whorled; isomerous, or anisomerous. Calyx rarely obviously 5 (Nardostachys, usually not clearly determinable); represented by bristles (often, ultimately), or not represented by bristles; 1 -whorled; polysepalous, or gamosepalous (Nardostachys with well developed segments, but usually reduced or obsolete, sometimes represented by inconspicuous teeth, often (e.g. Valeriana) represented by up to 20 segments that are inrolled at anthesis to form a ring around the base of the corolla, unrolling and expanding in the fruit to become setaceous, plumose and pappuslike); entire, or lobed (usually much reduced at anthesis); when not entire, lobulate, or blunt-lobed, or toothed; persistent; accrescent (often forming a pappus in the fruit — e.g. Valeriana). Epicalyx absent. Corolla (3–)5; 1 -whorled; gamopetalous; imbricate; funnel-shaped, or tubular; unequal but not bilabiate, or bilabiate, or regular; spurred (often), or not spurred. Fertile stamens present, or absent (occasionally, in female flowers). Androecium (1–)3(–4). Androecial members adnate (inserted above the middle of the corolla tube); free of one another; 1 -whorled. Androecium exclusively of fertile stamens. Stamens 1 (the posterior only), or 3 (by suppression of the posterior and a lateral), or 4 (usually, by suppression of the posterior); reduced in number relative to the adjacent perianth; oppositisepalous. Anthers dorsifixed; dehiscing via longitudinal slits; introrse; tetrasporangiate. Fertile gynoecium present, or absent (occasionally, when flower male). Gynoecium 3 carpelled. The pistil 3 celled. Carpels reduced in number relative to the perianth. Gynoecium syncarpous; synstylovarious to eu-syncarpous; inferior. Ovary plurilocular; 3 locular (but only one of the three locules fertile). Gynoecium stylate. Styles 1; apical. Stigmas 1, or 3. Placentation apical. Ovules 1 per locule; pendulous; non-arillate; anatropous.

Fruit and seed features. Fruit non-fleshy; indehiscent; achene-like, or a samara; 1 seeded. Seeds non-endospermic. Embryo well differentiated. Cotyledons 2. Embryo chlorophyllous (2/3); straight. Seedling. Germination phanerocotylar.

Physiology, biochemistry. Aluminium accumulation not found.

Geography, cytology, number of species. World distribution: almost cosmopolitan, but lacking from tropical Africa, Madagascar, Australasia. X = (7-)9(-12). 400 species.