Perennial herbs or deciduous shrubs, often spiny. Leaves digitate, or once or more pinnate; leaflets serrulate. Flowers in umbellate racemes or panicles, rarely in compound umbels. Petals 5, imbricate. Fruit laterally compressed, 2- to 5-celled. Pedicels articulated with the flowers. About thirty species are referred here, nearly all from the northern hemisphere and a few from temperate North America and Asia. The origin of the name is unexplained.

1. A. spindsa. Angelica Tree. - This is, after the Ivies, the most familiar species of the order. It is a shrub or small tree with simple stout stems and very large tripinnate leaves composed of numerous serrulate leaflets. The stem and petioles are usually spiny. Inflorescence terminal. A handsome and distinct shrub from North America.

2. A. Chinensis, syn. A. Mandshurica, Dimorphanthus. - Near No. 1, but with very hairy and prickly usually bipinnate leaves and less regularly toothed leaflets. A native of North China, etc.

A. nudicaulis, racemosa,hispida, and Ginseng, syn. Panax Ginseng, are North American herbaceous species, possessing medicinal properties, but of no special merit as ornamental plants.