Asparagaceae

Asparagaceae is a family of flowering plants, placed in the order Asparagales of the monocots. Its best known member is Asparagus officinalis, garden asparagus. In earlier classification systems, the species involved were often treated as belonging to the family Liliaceae. The APG II system of 2003 allowed two options as to the circumscription of the family: either Asparagaceae sensu lato ('in the wider sense') combining seven previously recognized families, or Asparagaceae sensu stricto ('in the strict sense') consisting of very few genera (notably Asparagus, also Hemiphylacus), but nevertheless totalling a few hundred species. The revised APG III system of 2009 allows only the broader sense. A paper published at the same time proposed seven subfamilies to correspond to the originally separate families. These are: Asparagaceae includes 114 genera with a total of ca 2900 known species. Unless otherwise noted, the alphabetical list below is based on genera accepted by the World Checklist of Selected Plant Families as in the family Asparagaceae (with synonyms from the same source). The reference against the subfamily name is to the source which places the genus in that subfamily.