Rousseaceae is a

plant Plants are predominantly photosynthetic eukaryotes of the kingdom Plantae. Historically, the plant kingdom encompassed all living things that were not animals, and included algae and fungi; however, all current definitions of Plantae exclud ...

family in the order

Asterales Asterales () is an order of dicotyledonous flowering plants that includes the large family Asteraceae (or Compositae) known for composite flowers made of florets, and ten families related to the Asteraceae. While asterids in general are chara ...

containing trees and shrubs. The fruit is a berry or capsule. Leaves are simple, with toothed margins. Leaf stipules are not seen in this group. The family contains four genera and twelve or thirteen species. From

Mauritius Mauritius ( ; french: Maurice, link=no ; mfe, label=Mauritian Creole, Moris ), officially the Republic of Mauritius, is an island nation in the Indian Ocean about off the southeast coast of the African continent, east of Madagascar. It incl ...

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, sma ...

New Guinea New Guinea (; Hiri Motu Hiri Motu, also known as Police Motu, Pidgin Motu, or just Hiri, is a language of Papua New Guinea, which is spoken in surrounding areas of Port Moresby (Capital of Papua New Guinea). It is a simplified version of ...

New Zealand New Zealand ( mi, Aotearoa ) is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and over 700 smaller islands. It is the sixth-largest island count ...

and a few other Pacific Islands. The genera ''

Abrophyllum ''Abrophyllum'' ( syn.: ''Brachynema'' F.Muell.) is a monotypic genus of flowering plants in the family Saxifragaceae ''sensu lato'' according to Engler, A. in Engler & Prantl and Schulze-Menz, G. K. in Melchior, 1964; placed in Subfamily Escall ...

'', ''

Cuttsia ''Cuttsia viburnea'' is a shrub or bushy tree which has toothed leaves and panicles of white flowers, and that is endemic to eastern Australia. It is sometimes called silver-leaved cuttsia, and confusingly also native elderberry, honey bush or na ...

'' and ''

Carpodetus ''Carpodetus'' is a genus of flowering plants in the Rousseaceae family. It was formerly considered to lie within the Escalloniaceae. Its species occur in New Guinea, New Zealand, Solomon Islands, and Vanuatu. The genus is characterised by small ...

'' have been formerly placed in a separate family, Carpodetaceae, or within

Escalloniaceae Escalloniaceae is a family of flowering plants consisting of about 130 species in seven genera. In the APG II system it is one of eight families in the euasterids II clade (campanulids) that are unplaced as to order. More recent research has prov ...

Taxonomy

''Roussea'' is sister to the remainder of the family and is most distanced from the other genera. ''Carpodetus'' is the sister to the clade consisting of ''Abrophyllum'' and ''Cuttsia''. This results in the following phylogenetic tree.

References

{{Taxonbar, from=Q132691 Asterales families