Peucedanum L.

Biennial or perennial herbs, glabrous to variously pilose, rootstock various. Leaves variously pinnately or ternately divided into filiform to broad and jaggedly toothed segments, nervation pinnate, very rarely parallel-nerved and then with obscure secondary venation. Umbels compound, few–many; involucre of 0 or few caducous to numerous persistent bracts; involucel usually conspicuous, of numerous bracteoles; flowers usually polygamous, the terminal umbels of stem and branches hermaphrodite and fertile or the inner partial umbels or their inner flowers ♂, the opposite or verticillate outer umbels entirely or in part ♂. Calyx-teeth absent to small but distinct. Petals white to cream, yellow or (commonly in Africa) greenish cream, ± incised above with a large or smaller incurved acute point. Fruit strongly dorsally compressed, oblong to elliptic, obovate or roundish, glabrous, truncate to slightly emarginate at base and apex, the stylopodia ± apical, commissure wide; 3 dorsal ribs ± prominent, slender, 2 marginal ribs expanded into distinct, broad to rather narrow, paper-thin or thicker wings; vittae 2–8(–12) on the commissural face, when numerous then slender and variable in number and sometimes irregular; vallecular vittae l–3(–5) or rarely almost a complete ring of vittae around the endosperm; vittae usually black and conspicuous in the ripe fruit, but on the commissure sometimes concealed by overlying tissue and clear only in section; stylopodia conical; styles short; carpophore deeply bipartite. Endosperm flat or shallowly bisulcate on the commissural face, slightly to clearly sulcate beneath the vittae dorsally.