Introduction to the Araliaceae Family

The Araliaceae family is best known for its most popular plant, ginseng. But there are so many other lovely plants in this family. My personal favorite member of this family is Oplopanax horridus, or Devil’s Club. It’s pretty typical of the family growing as a shrub with large leaves and small flowers in tall umbels followed by small red drupes.

The Araliaceae are part of the Apiales order of core dicots and are very closely related to the Apiaceae (carrot) family and have many overlapping characteristics. In general, however, the Apiaceae are usually herbs that produce dry schizocarps, while the Araliaceae are usually shrubs or trees and usually produce berry-like drupes. 

Common Botanical Description

If you’re new to plant morphology, this guide is a perfect beginner’s description to learn to identify the Araliaceae family, with no need to know any scientific jargon. Below this section are morphology photos to help you identify the family, followed by pictures of individual species found in North America. But for researchers or those wanting to learn a more in-depth version, refer to the Scientific Botanical Description below the images for highly detailed scientific descriptions and genus-level distribution data.

Leaves and Stems: This family is mostly perennial trees and shrubs, but there is an occasional woody vine and herb as well. None release milky juices when damaged. Most have medium to large leaves, including ones over 3 m long. Leaves are usually arranged in a spiral pattern around the stem and have sheaths that wrap around their base. Leaf blades are simple or compound (made of leaflets); when simple, the margins are often divided in some way, often lobed and maple leaf-like.

Flowers: The flowers are usually individually small but arranged in spikes or heads, sometimes branched, and occasionally in umbels similar to the Apiaceae family, which can cause confusion. The flowers are symmetrical with five petals that are often thick or fleshy with a highly variable calyx that may be reduced to a rim of teeth.

Reproductive Features: This varies in the family from bisexual flowers with both male (stamens) and female (ovary, style, stigma) parts in the same flower to separate male and female flowers on separate plants (dioecious). There are usually 5 stamens, but up to 100 in some species. Flowers usually have a fleshy nectar-producing disk at the base of the styles (tubes that capture pollen).

Fruits: Fruits are mostly fleshy berries or drupes (fleshy fruits with stony pits, like a cherry). But sometimes it is a dry fruit that spits into segments (schizocarp) similar to the Apiaceae (carrot) family.

Uses of Araliaceae 

Ornamentals include the angelica tree (Aralia spinosa) and ivy (Hedera spp.), as well as houseplants such as Hedera, Aralia, Polyscias, Schefflera, and Fatsia. Note that Hedera species have become a widespread invasive species in many areas and should only be grown with extreme caution. Chinese rice paper comes from the pith of Tetrapanax papyriferus.

Medicinal herbs include ginseng roots from Panax quinquefolius and devil’s club (Oplopanax horridus) root bark used for respiratory conditions.

Morphology of Araliaceae in North America

Some Araliaceae Species in North America

Aralioideae Subfamily

Aralia nudicaulis – Wild Sarsaparilla

Herbaceous perennial from underground stems. Large compound leaves have 5 (3 – 7) finely serrated leaflets, often purplish green. Small white flowers in rounded clusters 4 – 5 cm wide on scapes not much taller than the leaves. Flowers are followed by edible purple-black berries. Native to northern and eastern North America.

Aralia spinosa – Devil’s Walking Stick

Aromatic spiny deciduous shrub or small tree 2 – 8 m tall with exceptionally large bipinnate leaves 70 – 120 cm long. Small white flowers in compound panicles are followed by purplish-black berries. Native to eastern North America.

Fatsia japonica – Paperplant

Evergreen shrub with stout, sparsely branched stems. Large 20 – 40 cm deeply palmately lobed leaves have 7 – 9 lobes, are spirally arranged, are leathery, and are on long petioles. Flowers are small, white, born in dense terminal compound umbels, followed by small black berries. Native to Japan and Korea, cultivated in North America.

Hedera helix – English Ivy

A highly invasive, vigorous root-climbing vine with variably 3-5 lobed leaves, depending on the cultivar and if it has reached reproductive age. It seldom flowers but produces small umbels of greenish-yellow flowers followed by purple-black berries. It spreads mostly vegetatively and takes over entire areas when it is left unchecked. Click for more information!

Oplopanax horridus – Devil’s Club

Woody deciduous spiny perennial shrub with large spiny palmately lobed leaves, small yellow-green flowers in racemes followed by clusters of small red berry-like drupes. Endemic to North America, mostly the Pacific Northwest, with a small disjunct population in the Great Lakes. Click the link for more info!

Hydrocotyloideae Subfamily

Hydrocotyle ranunculoides – Floating Pennywort

A creeping, mat-forming aquatic perennial of slow-moving, shallow water or wet mud. It has thin stems that may be above or below the water and rounded to kidney-shaped leaves with about 3-7 shallow lobes on the margins and a deeply notched base that makes it appear almost peltate. Small flowers appear separately in clusters. Native to North, Central, & South America but has become invasive in other parts of the world.

Scientific Botanical Description of the Araliaceae Family

Habit & Leaf Form of the Araliaceae

The Araliaceae are a family of shrubs, moderate-sized trees (occasionally very large, with Peekeliopanax reaching 40 m high), woody epiphytes, vines, occasionally herbs (Panax, Stilbocarpa, some Aralia, etc.), and occasionally some are switch plants. They are self-supporting, epiphytic, or climbing; when climbing, they may be stem twiners or root climbers. Almost always pachycaul with large leaves and thick stems, but sometimes they are leptocaul in Pseudopanax, where long and short shoots are seen. They are non-laticiferous without colored juice, with or without essential oils, and resinous.

Plants may or may not be conspicuously heterophyllous (sometimes, e.g., Hedera helix). Leaves are usually medium-sized but can be enormous (to over 3 m in Aralia) or rarely small (1–2 cm in Pseudopanax anomalum). Their attachment to the stem is nearly always alternate, mostly spiral, or rarely distichous, four-ranked, opposite (Cheirodendron, Polyscias), or whorled (Panax). Leaves are often leathery and usually are petiolate but also sometimes subsessile. They are usually more or less sheathing but may sometimes be non-sheathing; when sheathing, they have free margins. Leaves may be gland-dotted or not, and they may be aromatic or odorless. Leaf shapes are mostly simple or sometimes compound, including ternate, pinnate, palmate, multiply compound, and sometimes peltate (as seen in some Harmsiopanax). When simple, the lamina is usually dissected pinnatifid or palmatifid but may be entire. They are pinnately or palmately veined. Leaves may or may not have stiplules; when present, they are intrapetiolar, often adnate to and hard to distinguish from the petiole base. Some taxa have spines (as in Oplopanax).

Flowers of the Araliaceae

Plants may be hermaphroditic, monoecious, andromonoecious, gynomonoecious, dioecious, or polygamomonoecious. Flowers are aggregated in spikes, heads, and sometimes umbels (comparable to usual umbels in the Apiaceae) and sometimes in large compound inflorescences. Inflorescences are terminal, axillary, leaf-opposed, or rarely epiphyllous. Flowers are usually more or less 5-merous and cyclic and rarely calyptrate. The floral receptacle has neither an androphore nor a gynophore. Perianth has a distinct calyx and corolla or may be petaline, has 10(6–24) parts, and is usually two-whorled and isomerous or anisomerous. In Meryta, the flower is whorled, and the calyx is absent.

Calyx, when present, has 3–5 (–12) parts; is one whorled, free or connate, entire, lobulate, blunt-lobed, or toothed (when sometimes reduced to small teeth or a rim); and is often open when in bud. Corolla has 5 (3–13) parts where partially divided or lobed segments sometimes complicate the interpretation of parts. It is one whorled and usually alternates with the calyx, with most genera having five sepals alternating with five petals (exceptions do occur). The corolla is free or partially connate at the base, is rarely calyptrate, may be valvate or imbricate (in Aralieae), is always regular, and is often fleshy. Petals are usually sessile, often with broad bases inserted around the whole circumference of the upper part of the ovary, or sometimes they are clawed, as in Mackinleyeae.  

Androecium of the Araliaceae

The androecium has 5 (3–12) or 10–100 members made of exclusively fertile stamens that are free of the perianth and one another and all of equal size. Stamens are usually isomerous with the perianth, are inflexed in bud, and are filantherous with usually short and fleshy anthers. Stamens may alternate with the corolla members (usually when equal in number), or they may be opposite to them. Anthers are dorsifixed, dehisce via longitudinal slits, and introrse. Anthers are almost always tetrasporangiate (but occasionally appear bisporangiate by fusion during development) or multisporangiate in Octotheca and Dizygotheca.

Gynoecium of the Araliaceae

The gynoecium is 2–5(1–100) carpelled, and the pistil is 2–5(1–100) celled. The gynoecium is synovarious to syncarpous with the styles almost always forming a solid or sometimes hollow stylopodium. Or rarely, the gynoecium can appear monomerous in some Polyscias. It may be partly or fully inferior, or rarely superior (sometimes in Tetraplasandra). The ovary is 1–100 locular, and locules have no false septa. The epigynous disk is present with a nectariferous disk between the stylopodium and stamens. The number of styles varies widely from 1–100. When there are two or more, then they are free or partially joined and apical. Stigmas are usually present as a double-stigmatic crest capping the stylopodium and are wet or dry type, papillate, and of Group II and III types. Placentation, when bi/plurilocular (almost always), is axile to apical. When unilocular (rarely) parietal to apical. Ovules in the single cavity (1–2, if two, the second is typically abortive) per locule, pendulous, epitropous, with ventral raphe, anatropous, unitegmic, and usually crassinucellate or otherwise tenuinucellate.  

Fruit of the Araliaceae

Fruit may be fleshy or non-fleshy, often an indehiscent berry or drupe with separable pyrenes or with one stone (there are as many pyrenes as locules). Sometimes it will be a schizocarp with 2-5(6-100) mericarps. Gynoecia may combine to form multiple fruits. Seeds are endospermic, ruminate (e.g., Hedera) or not, and oily.

Taxonomy of Araliaceae

There are 1450 species in 43 genera within the Apiales order of core Eudicots (dicots). Currently, there are two recognized subfamilies in the Araliaceae. 

1. Aralioideae – The largest subfamily is made mostly of shrubs and trees, sometimes herbs or root or stem climbers. Leaves are usually pinnately to palmately compound, stipulate with connate, intrapetiolar, hooded, or sometimes cauline stipules. Fruit is almost always a drupe.  
2. Hydrocotyloideae – Herbaceous perennials, sometimes annuals, and some aquatics; the stem has endodermis. The leaf lamina is orbicular–peltate or deeply twice-lobed palmately; the margin is crenate or serrate, and they are stipulate (cauline or petiolar). 

The Hydrocotyloideae historically was considered part of the Apiaceae. However, modern phylogenetics showed that it was polyphyletic in the Apiaceae and was moved to the Araliaceae instead. Also, there have been a lot of generic changes with some genera increasing massively, others decreasing, some appearing, and some disappearing, so while this is as up-to-date (May 2026) as the information I have, the family composition is likely to change some in the near future.

Genera:

Aralioideae: Anakasia (1), Aralia (73), Arthrophyllum (2 = Phylloctenium?), Astropanax (15), Astrotricha (20), Brassaiopsis (45), Cephalaralia (1), Cheirodendron (6), Crepinella (33), Cuphocarpus (5?), Cussonia (20), Dendropanax (97), Didymopanax (38), Eleutherococcus (29), Fatsia (3), Gamblea (4), Gastonia (??), Harmsiopanax (3), Hedera (19), Heptapleurum (322), Heteropanax (9), Hunaniopanax (1-2?), Kalopanax? (1), Macropanax (18), Megalopanax? (?), Merrilliopanax (3), Meryta (28), Motherwellia (1), Munroidendron (?), Neocussonia (16), Oplopanax (3?), Opopanax (4), Oreopanax (148), Osmoxylon (61), Panax (15), Pentapanax (?), Plerandra (33), Polyscias (181), Pseudopanax (7), Raukaua (6), Schefflera (13), Sciodaphyllum (146), Seemannaralia (1), Sinopanax (1), Tetrapanax (1), Tetraplasandra (?), Trevesia (8), Woodburnia (1).

Hydrocotyloideae: Hydrocotyle (182), Trachymene (59).

Key Differences From Similar Families

The Araliaceae and Apiaceae are both similar to and closely related to each other, and often the two can be hard to differentiate. However, some more common differences include the fact that the Apiaceae are usually herbs vs. usually shrubs and trees in the Araliaceae and leaves that usually lack stipules in the Apiaceae vs. those that are usually present in the Araliaceae. Also, the fruit in Apiaceae is usually a dry schizocarp with two mericarps vs. usually a berry-like drupe in the Araliaceae (but sometimes a schizocarp).

Distribution of Araliaceae

Araliaceae is mostly a tropical family, but some are endemic to temperate climates as well. They are in Eurasia, Africa, Australia, New Zealand, New Caledonia, the Pacific Islands, and the Americas, from Arctic Canada to temperate South America.

Distribution of Araliaceae in the Americas

Canadian Genera Include:

Aralioideae: Aralia 5 spp. native to all of Canada except NU; Eleutherococcus 1 sp. intro to ON; Hedera 1-2 spp. intro BC and ON, very invasive in coastal BC; Kalopanax 1 sp. intro to ON; Oplopanax 1 sp. native to BC, AB, YT, and ON; Panax 2 spp. native to ON, QC, NB, NS, and PE. Hydrocotyloideae: Hydrocotyle 4 native to ON, QC, NB, NS, PE, and NL (excluding Labrador) and intro to BC.

USA Genera Include:

Aralia 8 spp. are native and intro to all of the USA exccept NV; Cheirodendron 5 of 6 C Pacific endemic spp. endemic to HI; Eleutherococcus 1 sp. intro to UT, IN, KY, OH, WV, PA, NY, CT, and MA; Hedera 3 spp intro and invasive to most of the USA except NV, MT S to NM, ND S to OK, MN, IA, WI, VT, NH, ME, and inc. HI; Heptapleurum ? spp. intro FL and HI; Kalopanax 1 sp. intro to NY, CT, MD, VA, OH, and IN; Oplopanax 1 sp. native to WA, OR, ID, WY, MI, NY, and AK; Panax 2 spp. native to all E USA from ND S to TX and all E except ND, TX, and FL; Polyscias 10 spp including 9 spp. native/endemic to HI and 1 sp. intro in FL; Tetrapanax monospecific intro AL, FL, and HI. Hydrocotyloideae: Hydrocotyle 9 spp. native and intro to most of the USA except ID, MT, WY, CO, ND, SD, NE, and IA and it is intro in HI.     

Mexico Genera Include:

Aralioideae: Aralia ~5-9 spp. native throughout all of Mexico; Dendropanax ~3-6 spp. native to most of Mexico except BC, BCS, Son, and Sin; Didymopanax 1 sp. native to SW+SE Mexico, Ver; Oreopanax 13? Mexico + neoendemic spp. native throughout all of Mexico, including the Mexican Pacific Is. Hydrocotyloideae: Hydrocotyle 5-10 spp. native throughout all of Mexico.

Neotropical Genera Include:

Aralioideae: Aralia ~ 8 spp. native to CAM, Cuba, Hispaniola, Colombia, Venezuela, Peru, Bolivia, Paraguay, N Argentina, E+S Brazil; Crepinella 33 NW SAM endemic spp. of Colombia, Venezuela, Guyana, N+C Brazil, Ecuador, and Peru; Dendropanax ~75 spp. native to CAM, Greater Antilles, Leeward Is, Venezuelan Antilles, Trinidad-Tobago, tropical SAM S to Peru, Bolivia, NE Argentina (except for Suriname, French Guiana, and Uruguay); Didymopanax 38 Mexico & neoendemic spp. native to CAM, Cuba, Hispaniola, Puerto Rico, Leeward Is, Trinidad-Tobago, tropical SAM S to NE Argentina (exc NW Argentina, N Chile), including at least 12 narrow endemics of Brazil; Fatsia 1 sp. intro Juan Fernandez Is; Heptapleurum 1? sp. intro to Bermuda, Bahamas, Hispaniola, Jamaica, Puerto Rico, Leeward & Windward Is; Oreopanax 148 Mexico + neoendemic spp. of CAM, Antilles (exc Cayman Is, Aruba, Netherlands Antilles), Trinidad-Tobago, Colombia, Venezuela, Guyana, Suriname?, French Guiana, N+E+S Brazil, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, NW Argentina; Plerandra 1 sp. intro to Trinidad-Tobago; Polyscias ? spp. intro to El Salvador, Bahamas, Hispaniola, Leeward Is., Puerto Rico, Trinidad-Tobago, and Venezuelan Antilles; Raukaua 1 sp. endemic to N+C Chile; Sciodaphyllum 146 neoendemic spp. of Jamaica, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, and Venezuela; Tetrapanax monospecific intro to S Brazil. Hydrocotyloideae: Hydrocotyle ?? spp. native and widespread in moist habitats of CAM, Bermuda, the Bahamas, Cuba, Hispaniola, Jamaica, Puerto Rico, the Leeward & Windward Is., Galapagos, and all of SAM, with high diversity in the Andes.

Patagonia Genera Include:

Aralioideae: Raukaua 2 spp. endemic to N+C Chile (1) + S Argentina (1). Hydrocotyloideae: Hydrocotyle ? spp. native throughout Patagonia and the Falkland Is.

Additional Information and References

• Visit Lyrae’s Dictionary of Botanical Terms to learn the terminology of botanists. Note that if you hover over most of the words in the articles, you can also get definitions from them there.
• Willis, Lyrae (Unpublished). Plant Families of North America. This is where all of the family descriptions come from. Below should be most of my references for this, as well as my own personal observations of plants in North America.
• Canadensys: Acadia University, Université de Montréal Biodiversity Centre, University of Toronto Mississauga, University of British Columbia. http://data.canadensys.net/explorer (accessed 2020 – current)
• Delta: Watson, L., and Dallwitz, M.J. (1992+). The Families of Flowering Plants: descriptions, illustrations, identification, and information retrieval. Version: 2nd May 2020. delta-intkey.com. Accessed spring through fall of 2020.
• GBIF.org (2020), GBIF Home Page. Available from: https://www.gbif.org
• Naturalista: CONABIO http://www.naturalista.mx (Accessed 2020–current).
• Neotropikey: Milliken, W., Klitgård, B., & Baracat, A. eds. (2009 onwards). Neotropikey: Interactive key and information resources for flowering plants of the Neotropics. www.kew.org/neotropikey.com (accessed 2020 – current).
• Patagonia Wildflowers: Wildflower Identification Site. https://patagoniawildflowers.org/ Accessed throughout the fall of 2020.
• POWO (2019). Plants of the World Online. Facilitated by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. Published on the Internet; http://www.plantsoftheworldonline.org/ Retrieved Winter 2020–current.
• USDA, NRCS. 2020. The PLANTS Database (http://plants.usda.gov, 2 June 2020). National Plant Data Team, Greensboro, NC, USA; accessed throughout fall of 2020.
• WFO (2022): World Flora Online. Published on the Internet: http://www.worldfloraonline.org. Accessed Spring 2022 – current

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Copyright Information

The information and the photos on this site are free to use for educational purposes, with proper attribution. For other uses, please contact me first.

You can cite this site as follows: Willis, Lyrae (2020+). Lyrae’s Nature Blog – Plant Families of North America. https://lyraenatureblog.com/. Accessed [Enter Date].