VALERIANACEAE
General description:- Annual to perennial herbs, sometimes woody at the base.
Leaves:- Opposite, whorled or basal, exstipulate.
Flowers:- In bracteate, often dense cymes, hermaphrodite or unisexual, usually zygomorphic. Calyx variously developed, usually toothed. Corolla funnel-shaped (infundibuliform), the tube sometimes pouch-shaped. (saccate) or spurred below, the limb with (3-)5 more or less unequal lobes. Stamens 1-4, usually inserted near base of corolla-tube, alternating with the corolla-lobes. Ovary inferior, 3-celled (locular), one loculus with 1 pendent ovule, the other two sterile, sometimes very small.
Fruit:- Dry, not splitting open to release their seeds (indehiscent), usually with a persistent, often accrescent (increasing in length or thickness with age) calyx; seed endospermic, with straight embryo.
CENTRANTHUS
General description:- Glabrous, usually glaucous annual or rhizomatous perennial herbs with erect, usually unbranched flowering stems.
Flowers:- Hermaphrodite or unisexual; inflorescence cymose, usually compound, with dense partial inflorescences. Calyx-teeth 5-25, linear, inrolled in flower and accrescent in fruit to form a feathery tuft of hairs (plumose pappus). Corolla with 5 usually unequal lobes; tube cylindrical or infundibuliform, with a pouch-like swelling (gibbous) near the middle, or spurred near the base and with an internal longitudinal membrane from the insertion of the spur to the mouth. Stamen 1. Stigma entire to 3-fid. Sterile loculi of fruit very small.
Key features:-
1) Corolla-tube spurred near the base or prominently gibbous near the middle.
2) Stamen 1.
Sect. CALCITRAPA
General description:- Annuals.
Leaves:- At least the upper lyrate-pinnatifid.
Flowers:- Corolla gibbous or shortly spurred. Stigma 3-fid.
Fruit:- Glabrous or hairy.
Sect. CENTRANTHUS
General description:- Perennial.
Leaves:- Undivided.
Flowers:- Corolla spurred near the base. Stigma entire.
Fruit:- Glabrous
FEDIA
General description:- Erect, dichotomously branched annuals.
Flowers:- Hermaphrodite, in terminal, usually paired capitula. Calyx usually very small, not or scarcely accrescent, with 2-4 teeth. Corolla with 5 unequal lobes; tube cylindrical, more than twice as long as limb, obscurely gibbous (with a pouch-like swelling) c. 1/3 of way from base. Stamens 2, or 3 with 2 united (connate). Stigma 2-fid. Sterile cell (loculi) of fruit well developed.
Key features:-
1) Stamens 2, or 3 of which 2 are connate.
2) Corolla-tube more than twice as long as limb.
VALERIANA
General description:- Rhizomatous perennial herbs.
Stems:- Erect, usually the flowering stems unbranched.
Leaves:- The leaves of a single plant vary in size and shape, forming a series from the basal leaves to the bracts, the lower leaves being usually simple, wide, petiolate and entire, and the upper being divided, narrow, sessile and with toothed margins.
Flowers:- Hermaphrodite or unisexual; inflorescence cymose, usually compound, with dense or lax partial inflorescences. Calyx-teeth 5-15, linear, inrolled in flower and accrescent and feathery (plumose) in fruit. Corolla with (3)5 unequal lobes; tube
funnel-shaped (infundibuliform), slightly pouch-like (gibbous) near the base. Stamens 3. Stigma 3-fid.
Fruit:- Sterile cells (loculi) of the fruit usually very small.
Key features:-
1) Perennial, not dichotomously branched.
2) Calyx-teeth plumose in fruit.
3) Stamens 3.
VALERIANELLA
General description:- Erect, dichotomously branched annuals.
Flowers:- Hermaphrodite, in terminal partial inflorescences (clusters) and sometimes also solitary in the dichotomies of the inflorescence. Calyx variously developed, with up to 6(-30) teeth, sometimes absent. Corolla small, with 5 slightly unequal lobes, bluish or pinkish; tube infundibuliform, not more than twice as long as limb, slightly gibbous. Stamens 3. Stigma 3-fid.
Fruit:- Sterile loculi of fruit variously developed.
Key features:-
1) Corolla-tube not spurred, not or obscurely gibbous.
2) Stamens 2-4.
3) Dichotomously branched annual.
4) Stamens 3, free.
5) Corolla-tube not more than twice as long as limb.
All species grow on disturbed ground or in other dry, open habitats, many of them principally as weeds of cultivated ground.
V. CORONATA Group
Stem:- Up to 30(-40) cm.
Leaves:- Lower cauline narrowly spathulate to ovate, obtuse, margin entire or toothed and uneven with rather deep rounded wavy undulations (sinuate-dentate); middle cauline spathulate-lanceolate, coarsely toothed; upper cauline linear-lanceolate, pinnatisect at base.
Flowers:- Bracts ovate, thin and dry (scarious), bristly (setose). Calyx bell-shaped (campanulate) or crown-shaped (coroniform, reticulately (netted) veined, glabrous, with distinct teeth, or reduced to an irregularly toothed rim.
Fruit:- Narrowly ovoid to oblong, 4-angled, more or less densely shaggy haired (villous); sterile loculi smaller than the fertile, extending to base of fruit, separated by an ovate, flat area.
Key features:-
1) Fruit oblong-ovoid 11/2-2 times as long as wide; obtusely 4-angled.
2) Fertile loculus about as wide as or wider than the combined width of the sterile loculi.
V. eriocarpa group.
Stems:- Up to 35(-45) cm.
Leaves:- Lower cauline leaves ovate-spathulate, obtuse, entire to sinuate; middle and upper narrowly ovate to lanceolate, the uppermost coarsely toothed.
Flowers:- Bracts more or less auriculate at base, green, with narrow, scarious margins, the lower linear-spathulate, obtuse, the upper narrowly triangular, acute. Lower fruit-bearing internodes somewhat thickened above, more or less winged, the uppermost short and broadly winged.
Fruits:- In numerous, small, fasciculate terminal clusters, some of which fall as a whole, and also solitary in the lower dichotomies, ovoid, the side with sterile loculi flattened, subglabrous to densely hairy; sterile loculi reduced to ribs, separated by an ovate flat area.