Plants climbing or erect shrubs or subshrubs, often spiny; roots often swollen and fusiform. Leaves usually reduced and scalelike but leaflike modified green branches, cladodes, often present. Inflorescences of solitary flowers, flower clusters, these sometimes racem- or umbel-like. Flowers unisexual or bisexual, radially symmetric, small; tepals 6, up to about 5 mm long, more or less equal, white, yellow, or green, free or fused at the base; stamens 6, inserted at the base of the tepals, non-functioinal in pistillate flowers, filaments free, anthers with 2 thecae, introrse, dorsifixed, longitudinally dehiscent; ovaries superior, 2-3-celled, placentation axile, with 2-12 ovules per cell; styles short, stigmas capitate or lobed. Fruits more or less globose berries, with 1-several seeds; seeds black, with endosperm; embryo straight or slightly cureved.
Asparagus includes about 300 species and grows in Medieterranean and arid tropical regions around the world.
Note: GBIF records include introduced and cultivated plants. Consequently, the distribution shown often differs from statements about a taxon's native distribution.
