Alliaceae is a family of herbaceous perennial flowering plants. They are monocots, part of order Asparagales. The family has been widely but not universally recognised; in the past, the plants involved were often treated as belonging to the family Liliaceae, and still are by some botanists.

The APG II system of 2003 recognises the family and places it in the order Asparagales in the clade monocots. APG II allows two options of the circumscription of the family:

• Alliaceae sensu lato ("in the wider sense"), including all the plants that were assigned to the families Agapanthaceae, Alliaceae and Amaryllidaceae in the 1998 APG.
• Alliaceae sensu stricto ("in the strict sense"), unchanged from the 1998 APG system, excluding the plants then forming the families Agapanthaceae and Amaryllidaceae.

Note that quite a few of the plants that were once included in family Alliaceae are assigned to the family Themidaceae by both APG and APG II.

The most important genus is Allium, which includes several important food plants, including onions (Allium cepa), chives (A. schoenoprasum), garlic (A. sativum and A. scordoprasum), and leeks (A. porrum).

Genera

The genera Androstephium, Bessera, Bloomeria, Brodiaea, Dandya, Dichelostemma, Milla, Petronymphe, Triteleia, and Triteleiopsis are now treated in the family Themidaceae.

References

Michael F. Fay and Mark W. Chase. 1996. Resurrection of Themidaceae for the Brodiaea alliance, and Recircumscription of Alliaceae, Amaryllidaceae and Agapanthoideae. Taxon 45: 441-451 (abstract)

External links

• Alliaceae
• Alliaceae in Stevens, P. F. (2001 onwards). Angiosperm Phylogeny Website Version 7, May 2006.
• Alliaceae [sensu lato] in L. Watson and M.J. Dallwitz (1992 onwards). The families of flowering plants
• Liliaceae in Flora of North America
• NCBI Taxonomy Browser [Alliaceae sensu stricto]
• links at CSDL, Texas