Fumarioideae is a subfamily of the

family Family (from ) is a Social group, group of people related either by consanguinity (by recognized birth) or Affinity (law), affinity (by marriage or other relationship). It forms the basis for social order. Ideally, families offer predictabili ...

Papaveraceae (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

plants Plants are the eukaryotes that form the kingdom Plantae; they are predominantly photosynthetic. This means that they obtain their energy from sunlight, using chloroplasts derived from endosymbiosis with cyanobacteria to produce sugars f ...

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 by humans as being in the same celestial sphere, celestial hemisphere relative to the invariable plane of the Solar ...

and

South Africa South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the Southern Africa, southernmost country in Africa. Its Provinces of South Africa, nine provinces are bounded to the south by of coastline that stretches along the Atlantic O ...

. The largest genus is ''

Corydalis ''Corydalis'' (from Greek ''korydalís'' " crested lark") is a genus of about 540 species of annual and perennial herbaceous plants in the family Papaveraceae, native to the temperate Northern Hemisphere and the high mountains of tropical ...

'' (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'' 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 spir ...

Leaves

Most species have compound leaves.

Taxonomy

The APG IV system of 2016 (unchanged from the earlier 1998 APG system, the 2003 APG II system, and the APG III system of 2009) includes the former family Fumariaceae within the Papaveraceae. 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: *'' Potomacapnos''

External links