Asclepiadaceae
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Authority
Gleason, Henry A. & Cronquist, Arthur J. 1991. Manual of vascular plants of northeastern United States and adjacent Canada. lxxv + 910 pp.
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Family
Asclepiadaceae
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Scientific Name
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Description
Family Description - Fls perfect, hypogynous, sympetalous, regular or nearly so, 5-merous; corolla with short to sometimes elongate tube and initially mostly convolute, often spreading or reflexed lobes, sometimes with a thickened ring of distinct or connate scales within the throat, and usually with a well developed corona arising from the external base of the filaments or from the region of union of the filaments and corolla; filaments on the corolla-tube, distinct (as in Periploca) or more often connate into a usually short sheath around (and adherent to) the style, the anthers in any case coherent or connate and adherent to the thickened style-head; the combined filaments, anthers and style forming a structure called the gynostegium; pollen of each pollen-sac typically united into a waxy mass known as a pollinium, the right-hand pollinium of one anther connected to the left-hand pollinium of the adjacent anther by a transverse, acellular, often ornate structure called a translator, the pollinium-pair characteristically extracted from the anthers by means of the translator, which becomes entangled in the legs of visiting insects; pollinia and translators of somewhat different structure from the above in a few genera, as described under Periploca; ovaries 2, distinct, each with its own style, these united only by the common style-head, which is thickened and has restricted lateral stigmatic surfaces between the anthers; ovules very numerous; fr in all our genera an ovoid to linear follicle, often only one of a pair of ovaries maturing into fr; seeds numerous, almost always with a coma; herbs, shrubs or vines, usually with milky juice; lvs simple, opposite or occasionally whorled or alternate. 250/2000, mostly of warm regions.
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Common Names
The milkweed family