BOTANY WITH BASICS OF HYDROBOTANY (AQUATIC PLANTS OF UKRAINE) - B.Ye. Yakubenko - 2011

X. SEED PLANTS

Order Apiales or Araliales (Apiales, Araliales)

Trees, shrubs, or herbs with simple, entire, palmate, or pinnately compound leaves, featuring stipules or sheaths.

Phyllotaxy is alternate, rarely opposite or whorled. Flowers are small, pentamerous, arranged in terminal or axillary umbels, rarely in racemes or spikes. The calyx, adnate to the Ovary, has lobes in the form of small Teeth, which are often reduced or even absent. Petals are almost always free, valvate or more or less imbricate, rarely absent. Stamens equal the petals in number and alternate with them, though sometimes they are twice as numerous or even numerous. The gynoecium is coenocarpous, consisting of two, rarely three to five (occasionally more) carpels. Often the style or individual stylodia are expanded at the base into a stylopodium fused with the nectar disc. The ovary is inferior, rarely semi-inferior, crowned with a glandular nectar disc or stylopodium. Each locule of the ovary contains a single pendulous ovule. The fruit is a drupe, berry, or schizocarp (cremocarp).

The order comprises three families, over 380 genera, and more than 3,800 species. In Ukraine, it is represented by two families, 67 genera, and about 160 species.