M. Thulin (1999) 2: 268-287

Plants herbs, shrubs, or trees, aromatic; stems often hollow and pithy. Leaves usually alterenate, rarely opposite; petioles usually with a broad, sheathing base, usually without stipules; blades usually pinnately or ternately compound or dissected. . Inflorescences usually compound umbels, with or without bracts forming an involucre below the primary umbels and/or brateoles forming involucels below each secondary umbel, sometimes flowers in heads or solitary. Flowers small, usually bisexual, sometimes unisexual, radially or bilaterally symmetric with the outer petals larger than the inner; calyces 5-lobed, often reduced or effectively absent; petals 5, usually white or yellow, free, usually with an inflexed tip, valvate in bud, the other petals often larger than the others; stamens 5, strongly inflexed until anthesis, then usually spreading between the petals; anthers opening longitudinally; ovaries inferior, 2-celled, with 1 axile ovule per cell; styles 2, usually distinct, often expanded below into conical or cylindrical structure (the stylopodium) which may have a more or less distinct nectary dsic around its base. Fruits schizocarps, compressed or terete, consisting of two mericarps,  initially united by their inner surfaces but almost always separating at maturity revealing a slender, central carpophore to which they are attached at the tip; merciarps usually with 5 primary ribs, sometimes with secondar ribs between; vitae (oil tubes)) often present in the grooves between the ribs and/or beneath the ribs and on the interior surfaces, these sometimes detectable only in fruit crossections; seeds with copious endosperm and small embryos.

The family Apiaceae includes about 300 genera and 3,0000 species, It is cosmopolitan in its distribution. The above description excludes three genera (Bowlesia, Centella, and Hydrocotyle) that are now placed in Araliaceae.

©Trustees of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew; reproduced with permission.

Link to key to genera of Apiaceae in Somaliland and Somalia.

Global distribution of Apiaceae based on GBIF.