24-414: The Celastraceae ( staff-vine or bittersweet ) are a family of 98 genera and 1,350 species of herbs, vines, shrubs and small trees, belonging to the order Celastrales . The great majority of the genera are tropical, with only Celastrus (the staff vines), Euonymus (the spindles ) and Maytenus widespread in temperate climates, and Parnassia (bog-stars) found in alpine and arctic climates. Of
48-593: A wastebin taxon , dustbin taxon or catch-all taxon ) is a term used by some taxonomists to refer to a taxon that has the purpose of classifying organisms that do not fit anywhere else. They are typically defined by either their designated members' often superficial similarity to each other, or their lack of one or more distinct character states or by their not belonging to one or more other taxa. Wastebasket taxa are by definition either paraphyletic or polyphyletic , and are therefore not considered valid taxa under strict cladistic rules of taxonomy. The name of
72-639: A separate family. In 2000, Vincent Savolainen et alii found that three families - Lepidobotryaceae , Parnassiaceae , and Celastraceae - were closely related. They stated that these three families should constitute the order Celastrales, and this idea was accepted by the Angiosperm Phylogeny Group , which later subsumed the Parnassiaceae into the Celastraceae. Savolainen and co-authors also excluded Lophopyxis from
96-426: A wastebasket taxon may in some cases be retained as the designation of an evolutionary grade , however. The term was coined in a 1985 essay by Stephen Jay Gould . There are many examples of paraphyletic groups, but true "wastebasket" taxa are those that are known not to, and perhaps not intended to, represent natural groups, but are nevertheless used as convenient groups of organisms. The acritarchs are perhaps
120-776: Is 100% except where shown. Branches with less than 50% bootstrap support are collapsed. The clade numbers are from Simmons et al. (2008). Lepidobotrys Ruptiliocarpon Lepuropetalon Parnassia Pottingeria Mortonia Quetzalia Zinowiewia Peripterygia Siphonodon Dicarpellum Tripterococcus Macgregoria Stackhousia Menepetalum Psammomoya Denhamia Maytenus Gyminda Tripterygium Celastrus Paxistima Crossopetalum Canotia Euonymus Empleuridium Pterocelastrus Mystroxylon Robsonodendron Salaciopsis Catha Hartogiella Cassine Wastebasket taxon Wastebasket taxon (also called
144-548: Is now in the Malpighiales . Forsellesia is now in the Crossosomatales . It continues to be the subject of a dispute about whether its proper name is Forsellesia or Glossopetalon . After being placed elsewhere, Canotia , Brexia , and Plagiopteron were found to belong in the Celastraceae. The family Hippocrateaceae was found to be deeply nested within the Celastraceae and is no longer recognized as
168-481: Is the nectary disk, a feature that it shares with another rosid order, Sapindales . Since the orders are not closely related , the disk must have been an independent development in each of these lines . The Celastrales are a member of the Celastrales, Oxalidales (including Huaceae ), and Malpighiales (COM) clade of Fabidae, with Fabidae being one of the two groups of Eurosids . The name Celastrales
192-399: Is therefore called a bistomal micropyle. Flowers with well-developed male and female parts are often functionally unisexual . The seed often has an aril . In bud , the sepals have a quincuncial arrangement. This means that two sepals are inside, two are outside, and the remaining sepal is half inside and half outside. Perhaps the most conspicuous and unusual trait of the Celastrales
216-410: The Angiosperm Phylogeny Group recognized three families in the Celastrales – Lepidobotryaceae , Parnassiaceae , and Celastraceae . When they revised their classification in 2009, they recognized only two families because Pottingeria and the two genera of Parnassiaceae were transferred to the Celastraceae. Nicobariodendron became one of the five taxa placed incertae sedis in the angiosperms. In
240-412: The taxonomic name contains too much unrelated "baggage" to be successfully salvaged. As such, it is usually dumped in favour of a new, more restrictive name (for example, Rhynchocephalia ), or abandoned altogether (for example, Simia ). A related concept is that of form taxon , "wastebasket" groupings that are united by gross morphology. This is often result of a common mode of life, often one that
264-421: The 2006 phylogeny, Nicobariodendron was not sampled, but those species that were sampled fell into two strongly supported clades. One was a small clade consisting only of the family Lepidobotryaceae. Its sister was a very large clade containing the rest of the order. The large clade consisted of five strongly supported groups. These are the family Parnassiaceae, the genus Pottingeria , the genus Mortonia (in
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#1732791185109288-517: The 98 currently recognized genera of the family Celastraceae, 19 are native to Madagascar and these include at least 57 currently recognized species. Six of these 19 genera ( Brexiella , Evonymopsis , Hartogiopsis , Polycardia , Ptelidium , and Salvadoropsis ) are endemic to Madagascar. The genera Celastrus, Euonymus, Maytenus, Salacia , and Tripterygium are a few better-known genera. These genera each have distinctive traits and functions of their own. 98 genera are accepted by Plants of
312-412: The Celastraceae became a dumping ground for genera of dubious affinity . Several genera were assigned to this family with considerable doubt about whether they really belonged there. Also, some genera that properly belong in the Celastraceae were placed elsewhere. By the end of the 20th century, Goupia and Forsellesia had been excluded from the Celastraceae and also from the Celastrales. Goupia
336-475: The Celastraceae), and a pair of genera from the Celastraceae ( Quetzalia and Zinowiewia ), and the rest of the Celastraceae. No relationships were resolved among these groups. In 2008, Simmons and others produced a phylogeny of the Celastrales that achieved better resolution than the 2006 study by sampling more species and more DNA. They found the same pentatomy of five strongly supported groups that
360-408: The Celastraceae, removing considerable doubt about their placement there. They also showed that the small family Stackhousiaceae, consisting of three genera, is embedded in the Celastraceae. Except for taxa that were not sampled, these results were confirmed by the second phylogeny of the Celastrales, which was produced by Mark Simmons and several co-authors in 2008. Nicobariodendron sleumeri ,
384-621: The Celastraceae. Bhesa is now in the Centroplacaceae , a family in the Malpighiales. and Perrottetia is in the Huerteales . Zhang and Simmons found Pottingeria and Mortonia to be closely related to the families Parnassiaceae and Celastraceae, as they were then defined, but not in either of them. These two genera are therefore in the Celastrales. They found that Siphonodon and Empleuridium are proper members of
408-590: The Celastrales. Lophopyxis now constitutes a monogeneric family in the Malpighiales. In 2001, in a molecular phylogenetic study of DNA sequences , Mark Simmons and others confirmed all of these results except for the placement of Lophopyxis and the Lepidobotryaceae, which they did not sample. In 2006, Li-Bing Zhang and Mark Simmons produced a phylogeny of the Celastrales based on nuclear ribosomal , and chloroplast DNA . Their results showed that Bhesa and Perrottetia were misplaced in
432-524: The World Online as of November 2024: This Celastraceae article is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Celastrales Celastraceae Lepidobotryaceae The Celastrales are an order of flowering plants found throughout the tropics and subtropics , with only a few species extending far into the temperate regions. The 1200 to 1350 species are in about 100 genera . All but seven of these genera are in
456-434: The crocodile-like Triassic group Rauisuchia . One of the roles of taxonomists is to identify wastebasket taxa and reclassify the content into more natural units. Sometimes, during taxonomic revisions, a wastebasket taxon can be salvaged after doing thorough research on its members, and then imposing tighter restrictions on what continues to be included. Such techniques "saved" Carnosauria and Megalosaurus . Other times,
480-435: The large family Celastraceae . Until recently, the composition of the order and its division into families varied greatly from one author to another. The Celastrales are a diverse order that has no conspicuous distinguishing characteristic , so is consequently hard to recognize. The flowers are usually small with a conspicuous nectary disk . The stipules are small or rarely absent. The micropyle has two openings and
504-400: The most famous example. Wastebasket taxa are often old (and perhaps not described with the systematic rigour and precision that is possible in the light of accumulated knowledge of diversity) and populous. Fossil groups that are poorly known due to fragmentary remains are sometimes grouped together on gross morphology or stratigraphy , only later to be found to be wastebasket taxa, such as
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#1732791185109528-604: The only member of its genus, continues to be an enigma. It is a small tree from the Andaman and Nicobar Islands of India. Little is known of it and it has never been sampled for DNA. It is generally thought to belong in the Celastrales, but this is not a certainty. It is one of the five taxa placed incertae sedis in the angiosperms in the APG III system of classification . The Celastrales have been divided into families in various ways. In their APG II classification in 2003,
552-459: The previous study had found, but only weak to moderate support for any relationships between the five groups. In the APG III system, the family Celastraceae was expanded to consist of these five groups. No one has yet published an intrafamilial classification for the expanded Celastraceae. The following phylogenetic tree was made by combining parts of three different trees. Bootstrap support
576-486: Was first used by Thomas Baskerville in 1839. In the time since Baskerville first defined the order, until the 21st century, great differences of opinion occurred about what should be included in the order and in its largest family, the Celastraceae . The family Celastraceae was the only group consistently placed in the order by all authors who accepted it. Because of the ambiguity and complexity of its definition ,
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