3. Aphanes L.

About 20 species, North America, South America, Europe, Asia, Africa; introduced elsewhere.

The genus is sometimes treated as a subgenus of annual plants with reduced stamen number within the larger more cosmopolitan Alchemilla L. K. R. Robertson (1974) and some other authors have suggested that future studies may reveal that the number of species in Aphanes may be fewer than generally has been accepted, with most of the American and other taxa possibly representing mere variants of a couple of European species that have become disseminated widely during the last few centuries.