Commelineae is a

tribe The term tribe is used in many different contexts to refer to a category of human social group. The predominant worldwide usage of the term in English is in the discipline of anthropology. This definition is contested, in part due to confl ...

monocotyledonous Monocotyledons (), commonly referred to as monocots, (Lilianae ''sensu'' Chase & Reveal) are grass and grass-like flowering plants (angiosperms), the seeds of which typically contain only one embryonic leaf, or cotyledon. They constitute one of t ...

flowering plant Flowering plants are plants that bear flowers and fruits, and form the clade Angiospermae (), commonly called angiosperms. They include all forbs (flowering plants without a woody stem), grasses and grass-like plants, a vast majority of ...

s in the dayflower

family Family (from la, familia) is a group of people related either by consanguinity (by recognized birth) or affinity (by marriage or other relationship). The purpose of the family is to maintain the well-being of its members and of society. Idea ...

(

Commelinaceae Commelinaceae is a family of flowering plants. In less formal contexts, the group is referred to as the dayflower family or spiderwort family. It is one of five families in the order Commelinales and by far the largest of these with about 731 kn ...

). The tribe consists of 13 genera and about 350 species. It is one of two tribes in the subfamily

Commelinoideae Commelinoideae is a subfamily of monocotyledonous plants in the dayflower family ( Commelinaceae). It is one of two subfamilies within the Commelinaceae and includes 39 genera (out of 41 in the family) and all but 12 of the family's several hund ...

, the other being the Tradescantieae, which is made up of 26 genera and about 300 species. The remaining two genera in the family are in a separate subfamily, the Cartonematoideae. The Commelineae can be separated morphologically from its sister tribe, the Tradescantieae, through a number of technical characters. These include having six subsidiary cells with the terminal pair always being smaller than the second lateral pair,

pollen Pollen is a powdery substance produced by seed plants. It consists of pollen grains (highly reduced microgametophytes), which produce male gametes (sperm cells). Pollen grains have a hard coat made of sporopollenin that protects the gametop ...

with a spiny

exine Pollen is a powdery substance produced by seed plants. It consists of pollen grains (highly reduced microgametophytes), which produce male gametes (sperm cells). Pollen grains have a hard coat made of sporopollenin that protects the gameto ...

and a perforate

tectum The midbrain or mesencephalon is the forward-most portion of the brainstem and is associated with vision, hearing, motor control, sleep and wakefulness, arousal (alertness), and temperature regulation. The name comes from the Greek ''mesos'', "m ...

, primarily

zygomorphic Floral symmetry describes whether, and how, a flower, in particular its perianth, can be divided into two or more identical or mirror-image parts. Uncommonly, flowers may have no axis of symmetry at all, typically because their parts are spiral ...

flowers, non-moniliform filament hairs, no silica in the

epidermis The epidermis is the outermost of the three layers that comprise the skin, the inner layers being the dermis and Subcutaneous tissue, hypodermis. The epidermis layer provides a barrier to infection from environmental pathogens and regulates the ...

, and small

chromosome A chromosome is a long DNA molecule with part or all of the genetic material of an organism. In most chromosomes the very long thin DNA fibers are coated with packaging proteins; in eukaryotic cells the most important of these proteins ar ...

Molecular phylogenetics Molecular phylogenetics () is the branch of phylogeny that analyzes genetic, hereditary molecular differences, predominantly in DNA sequences, to gain information on an organism's evolutionary relationships. From these analyses, it is possible to ...

generally supports the separation of the two tribes.

References

Commelinaceae Monocot tribes {{Commelinales-stub