found: Britannica online, viewed January 26, 2023(Asclepiadoideae, formerly Asclepiadaceae, the milkweed subfamily of the flowering-plant family Apocynaceae (order Gentianales), including more than 214 genera and about 2,400 species of tropical herbs or shrubby climbers, rarely shrubs or trees; formerly treated as its own family (Asclepiadaceae), but molecular evidence suggests that the group is evolutionarily derived from Apocynaceae, and thus it has been recategorized as a subfamily by the Angiosperm Phylogeny Group III (APG III) botanical classification system)
