VALERIANEAE. A natural order of annual or perennial herbs, sub-shrubs, or rarely shrubs, mostly found in temperate and frigid regions of the Northern hemisphere, copious in Western America and the Andes, rarely found in tropical Asia, Brazil, Guiana, and the West Indies. Flowers cymose or solitary; calyx tube adnate to the ovary, often small, sometimes obsolete; corolla white, pale blue, red, or (in Patrinia) yellow, superior, gamopetalous, the base of the tube often attenuated, gibbous or spurred, the limb spreading, three to five-cleft or bilabiate; stamens one to four, inserted below or above the middle of the tube, often exserted; filaments free; anthers two-celled; cymes terminal or axillary, clustered, or loosely corymbose or paniculate. Fruit dry, indehiscent. Leaves opposite, exstipulate, often mostly radical or clustered at the base of the stem, entire or toothed; cauline ones sometimes few, small, or wanting, sometimes many, entire, or often as large as the radical ones, and toothed, pinnatifid, or once, twice, or thrice pinnatisect. The medicinal qualities of Valerianeae have been known from ancient times; the plants now take rank at the head of the vegetable anti-spasmodics. The order includes nine genera, and about 300 species. Examples: Centranthus, Nardostachys, Patrinia, Valeriana.