(1797)[notes 1] Allioideae is a subfamily of monocot flowering plants in the family Amaryllidaceae, order Asparagales.

[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.

[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.

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] By the time of the next major British (though written in Latin) classification, that of Bentham and Hooker (1883), the Allieae had become one of 20 tribes within Liliaceae.

[25] Similarly in the German language literature, Engler's classification (1903) treated Allieae and Gilliesiae as tribes of subfamily Allioideae, within Liliaceae.

[26] In the early 20th century, doubts were expressed about the placement of the alliaceous genera within Liliaceae, based solely on the position of the ovary.

[29] In 1926, John Hutchinson moved the tribes Allieae and Gilliesieaes from Liliaceae to the Amaryllidaceae,[30] although this was not universally adopted.

In 1996, a molecular phylogenetic study of the rbcL gene showed that Agapanthus was misplaced in Alliaceae, and the authors excluded it from the family.

This is the circumscription which the Angiosperm Phylogeny Group accepted in the APG classification of 1998 and which later became known as Alliaceae sensu stricto.

When the APG III system was published in 2009, the alternative circumscriptions were discontinued and Alliaceae was no longer recognized.

[6] Some botanists have not strictly followed the Angiosperm Phylogeny Group and have recognized the smaller version of Alliaceae at family rank.

[39][40] Successive revisions of the Angiosperm Phylogeny Group (APG) classification have changed the circumscription of the family.

[43] As of December 2014[update], the following eighteen genera are included in the Allioideae:[notes 3] The genera Androstephium, Bessera, Bloomeria, Brodiaea, Dandya, Dichelostemma, Jaimehintonia, Milla, Muilla, Petronymphe, Triteleia, and Triteleiopsis are now treated in the family Themidaceae (alt.