Allioideae is a subfamily of monocot flowering plants in the family Amaryllidaceae, order Asparagales. It was formerly treated as a separate family, Alliaceae.[6] The subfamily name is derived from the generic name of the type genus, Allium. It is composed of about 18 genera.
When Linnaeus formerly described the type genus Allium in his Species Plantarum in 1753,[8] thirty species had this name. He placed Allium in a grouping he referred to as Hexandria monogynia (i.e. six stamens and one pistil)[9] containing 51 genera in all.[10]
In 1763, Michel Adanson, who proposed the concept of families of plants, included Allium and related genera as a grouping within Liliaceae[11] as Section IV, Les Oignons (Onions), or Cepae in Latin.[12] De Jussieu is officially recognised as the first formal establishment of the suprageneric grouping into families (Ordo) in 1789. In this system Allium was one of fourteen genera in Ordo VI, Asphodeles (Asphodeli), of the third class (Stamina epigyna) of Monocots.[13]
In 1786, the Allioideae were first described by their type genus as Alliaceae by Batsch.[2] In 1797, after the appearance of the Jussieu system, this was validated by Borkhausen.[3] Jean Henri Jaume Saint-Hilaire (1805), who developed the concept of Amaryllidaceae, continued Jussieu's treatment of Allium under Asphodeli (which he considered synonymous with Adanson's Liliaceae and Jussieu's Asphodeli).[14] He placed Allium in an unnamed monotypic section of Asphodeli defined as Fleurs en ombelle, racine bulbeuse. Calice à six parties egales (umbellate flowers, bulbous, calyx of six equal parts).[15]
Subsequently, de Candolle reverted the family name back to Liliaceae from Asphodeli.[16] He divided the Liliaceae into a series of Ordres, and the second ordre was named Asphodèles, based on Jussieus' family of that name,[17] in which he placed Allium.[18] The term 'Alliaceae' then reappeared in its subfamilial form, Allieae, in Dumortier's Florula Belgica (1827),[19] with six genera.
The 'Alliaceae' have been treated as Allieae within the family Liliaceae (or Aspholecaceae, a partial synonym) by most authorities since. In 1830, Lindley, the first English systematist, considered Alliaceae[notes 2] to be part of the tribe Asphodeleae,[21] separating them from the Liliaceae as he understood them. He also described the closely related Gilliesieae (p. 274), which with the Allieae would later migrate to Amaryllidaceae.By the time of his final work in 1846 he realised that the Liliaceae, which had expanded greatly were very diverse in circumscription with many subdivisions, and were already paraphyletic ("catch-all"). He absorbed Asphodeleae into this family and created a suborder of Scilleae, which he considered equivalent to Link's Allieae.[22]