Altingiaceae is a small

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 ...

flowering plant Flowering plants are plants that bear flowers and fruits, and form the clade Angiospermae (), commonly called angiosperms. The term "angiosperm" is derived from the Greek words ('container, vessel') and ('seed'), and refers to those plants th ...

s in the order

Saxifragales The Saxifragales (saxifrages) are an order of flowering plants (Angiosperms). They are an extremely diverse group of plants which include trees, shrubs, perennial herbs, succulent and aquatic plants. The degree of diversity in terms of vegeta ...

, Peter F. Stevens (2001 onwards). "Altingiaceae". At: Angiosperm Phylogeny Website. At: Missouri Botanical Garden Website. (see ''External links'' below) consisting of

wind-pollinated Anemophily or wind pollination is a form of pollination whereby pollen is distributed by wind. Almost all gymnosperms are anemophilous, as are many plants in the order Poales, including grasses, sedges, and rushes. Other common anemophilous pla ...

trees In botany, a tree is a perennial plant with an elongated stem, or trunk, usually supporting branches and leaves. In some usages, the definition of a tree may be narrower, including only woody plants with secondary growth, plants that are u ...

that produce hard,

wood Wood is a porous and fibrous structural tissue found in the stems and roots of trees and other woody plants. It is an organic materiala natural composite of cellulose fibers that are strong in tension and embedded in a matrix of lignin ...

fruit In botany, a fruit is the seed-bearing structure in flowering plants that is formed from the ovary after flowering. Fruits are the means by which flowering plants (also known as angiosperms) disseminate their seeds. Edible fruits in particu ...

s containing numerous

seed A seed is an embryonic plant enclosed in a protective outer covering, along with a food reserve. The formation of the seed is a part of the process of reproduction in seed plants, the spermatophytes, including the gymnosperm and angiospe ...

s. The fruits have been studied in considerable detail.Stephanie M. Ickert-Bond, Kathleen B. Pigg, and Jun Wen. 2005. "Comparative infructescence morphology in ''Liquidambar'' (Altingiaceae) and its evolutionary significance". ''American Journal of Botany'' 92(8):1234-1255.Stephanie M. Ickert-Bond, Kathleen B. Pigg, and Jun Wen. 2007. "Comparative infructescence morphology in ''Altingia'' (Altingiaceae) and discordance between morphological and molecular phylogenies". ''American Journal of Botany'' 94(7):1094-1115. They naturally occur in

Central America Central America ( es, América Central or ) is a subregion of the Americas. Its boundaries are defined as bordering the United States to the north, Colombia to the south, the Caribbean Sea to the east, and the Pacific Ocean to the west. ...

Mexico Mexico (Spanish: México), officially the United Mexican States, is a country in the southern portion of North America. It is bordered to the north by the United States; to the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; to the southeast by Guatema ...

, eastern North America, the eastern

Mediterranean The Mediterranean Sea is a sea connected to the Atlantic Ocean, surrounded by the Mediterranean Basin and almost completely enclosed by land: on the north by Western Europe, Western and Southern Europe and Anatolia, on the south by North Africa ...

, China, and

tropical The tropics are the regions of Earth surrounding the Equator. They are defined in latitude by the Tropic of Cancer in the Northern Hemisphere at N and the Tropic of Capricorn in the Southern Hemisphere at S. The tropics are also referred to ...

Asia Asia (, ) is one of the world's most notable geographical regions, which is either considered a continent in its own right or a subcontinent of Eurasia, which shares the continental landmass of Afro-Eurasia with Africa. Asia covers an are ...

.Stephanie M. Ickert-Bond and Jun Wen. 2006. "Phylogeny and biogeography of Altingiaceae: Evidence from combined analysis of five non-coding chloroplast regions". ''Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution'' 39(2):512-528. (see ''External links'' below). They are often cultivated as

ornamentals Ornamental plants or garden plants are plants that are primarily grown for their beauty but also for qualities such as scent or how they shape physical space. Many flowering plants and garden varieties tend to be specially bred cultivars that i ...

and many produce valuable

.Peter K. Endress. 1993. "Hamamelidaceae". pages 322–331. In:

Klaus Kubitzki Klaus Kubitzki (born 1933) is a German botanist. He is an Emeritus professor in the University of Hamburg, at the Herbarium Hamburgense. He is known for his work on the systematics and biogeography of the angiosperms, particularly those of the ...

(editor); Jens G. Rohwer and Volker Bittrich (volume editors). ''The Families and Genera of Vascular Plants'' volume II. Springer-Verlag: Berlin;Heidelberg, Germany.

Classification

Altingiaceae now consists of the single genus ''

Liquidambar ''Liquidambar'', commonly called sweetgum (star gum in the UK), gum, redgum, satin-walnut, or American storax, is the only genus in the flowering plant family Altingiaceae and has 15 species. They were formerly often treated in Hamamelidaceae ...

'' with 15 known species. Previously, the genera ''

Altingia ''Liquidambar'', commonly called sweetgum (star gum in the UK), gum, redgum, satin-walnut, or American storax, is the only genus in the flowering plant family Altingiaceae and has 15 species. They were formerly often treated in Hamamelidaceae. ...

'' and '' Semiliquidambar'' were also recognised, but these represent a rapid radiation and have been difficult to separate reliably. ''Semiliquidambar'' has recently been shown to be composed of hybrids of species of ''Altingia'' and ''Liquidambar''. This result had been expected for some time. ''Altingia'' and ''Liquidambar'' are known to be paraphyletic and a revision of the family has been prepared. Many of the

species In biology, a species is the basic unit of classification and a taxonomic rank of an organism, as well as a unit of biodiversity. A species is often defined as the largest group of organisms in which any two individuals of the appropriate s ...

are closely related, and distinctions between them are likely to be

artificial Artificiality (the state of being artificial or manmade) is the state of being the product of intentional human manufacture, rather than occurring naturally through processes not involving or requiring human activity. Connotations Artificiality ...

History

The name "Altingiaceae" has a long and complex taxonomic history. Some attribute the name to John Lindley, who

published Publishing is the activity of making information, literature, music, software and other content available to the public for sale or for free. Traditionally, the term refers to the creation and distribution of printed works, such as books, news ...

it in 1846. Others say that the authority for the name is Paul F. Horaninov, who described the group in 1841.James L. Reveal. 2008 onward. "A Checklist of Family and Suprafamilial Names for Extant Vascular Plants." At: Home page of

James L. Reveal James Lauritz Reveal (March 29, 1941 – January 9, 2015) was a U.S. botanist best known for his contributions to the genus '' Eriogonum'' and for his work on suprageneric names. His website, at PlantSystematics.org, also presents material on plan ...

and C. Rose Broome. (see ''External links'' below). In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the family Altingiaceae was not generally accepted. Most authors placed these genera in

Hamamelidaceae Hamamelidaceae, commonly referred to as the witch-hazel family, is a family of flowering plants in the order Saxifragales. The clade consists of shrubs and small trees positioned within the woody clade of the core Saxifragales. An earlier syste ...

and this treatment has been followed in some recent works as well.Vernon H. Heywood, Richard K. Brummitt, Ole Seberg, and Alastair Culham. ''Flowering Plant Families of the World''. Firefly Books: Ontario, Canada. (2007). In the twenty-first century, however, molecular phylogenetic studies have shown that including Altingiaceae in Hamamelidaceae makes Hamamelidaceae paraphyletic. The Angiosperm Phylogeny Group recognizes four families in the lineage including Altingiaceae. Cercidiphyllaceae and

Daphniphyllaceae ''Daphniphyllum'' is the sole genus in the flowering plant family Daphniphyllaceae and was described as a genus in 1826. The genus includes evergreen shrubs and trees mainly native to east and southeast Asia, but also found in the Indian Subconti ...

are sister. This clade is sister to

and these three families are sister to Altingiaceae. The clade is sister to PaeoniaceaeShuguang Jian, Pamela S. Soltis, Matthew A. Gitzendanner, Michael J. Moore, Ruiqi Li, Tory A. Hendry, Yin-Long Qiu, Amit Dhingra, Charles D. Bell, and Douglas E. Soltis. 2008. "Resolving an Ancient, Rapid Radiation in Saxifragales". ''Systematic Biology'' 57(1):38-57. (see ''External links'' below). The family is named for the genus ''Altingia'', now a synonym of ''

''. This genus was named in honor of Willem Arnold Alting (1724–1800), the Governor-General of the Dutch East Indies when Noronha visited

Java Java (; id, Jawa, ; jv, ꦗꦮ; su, ) is one of the Greater Sunda Islands in Indonesia. It is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the south and the Java Sea to the north. With a population of 151.6 million people, Java is the world's mos ...

.Hayne F. G. 1830: ''Getreue Darstellung und Beschreibung der in der Arzneykunde gebräuchlichen Gewächse.'' Vol. 11. Berlin.
Online
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Evolution

Altingiaceae have an extensive

fossil A fossil (from Classical Latin , ) is any preserved remains, impression, or trace of any once-living thing from a past geological age. Examples include bones, shells, exoskeletons, stone imprints of animals or microbes, objects preserved ...

record.Kathleen B. Pigg, Stephanie M. Ickert-Bond, and Jun Wen. 2004. "Anatomically preserved ''Liquidambar'' (Altingiaceae) from the middle Miocene of Yakima Canyon, Washington State, USA, and its biogeographic implications". ''American Journal of Botany'' 91(3):499-509.Zhe-Kun Zhou, William L. Crepet, and Kevin C. Nixon. 2001. "The earliest fossil evidence of the Hamamelidaceae: Late Cretaceous (Turonian) inflorescences and fruits of Altingioideae". ''American Journal of Botany'' 88(5):753-766.Patrick S. Herendeen, Susana Magallón-Puebla, Richard Lupia, Peter R. Crane, and Jolanta Kobylinska. 1999. "A preliminary conspectus of the Allon flora from the late Cretaceous (late Santonian) of central Georgia, USA". ''Annals of the Missouri Botanical Garden'' 86(2):407-471. For most of the Paleogene and Neogene, they were more widely

distributed Distribution may refer to: Mathematics *Distribution (mathematics), generalized functions used to formulate solutions of partial differential equations *Probability distribution, the probability of a particular value or value range of a varia ...

than they are today. The

stem group In phylogenetics, the crown group or crown assemblage is a collection of species composed of the living representatives of the collection, the most recent common ancestor of the collection, and all descendants of the most recent common ancestor. ...

Altingiaceae diverged from the clade amamelidaceae + (Cercidiphyllaceae + Daphniphyllaceae)in the

Turonian The Turonian is, in the ICS' geologic timescale, the second age in the Late Cretaceous Epoch, or a stage in the Upper Cretaceous Series. It spans the time between 93.9 ± 0.8 Ma and 89.8 ± 1 Ma (million years ago). The Turonian is preceded b ...

stage Stage or stages may refer to: Acting * Stage (theatre), a space for the performance of theatrical productions * Theatre, a branch of the performing arts, often referred to as "the stage" * ''The Stage'', a weekly British theatre newspaper * Sta ...

of the

Cretaceous The Cretaceous ( ) is a geological period that lasted from about 145 to 66 million years ago (Mya). It is the third and final period of the Mesozoic Era, as well as the longest. At around 79 million years, it is the longest geological period of ...

Period, about 90 mya (million years ago). The crown group Altingiaceae is much more recent, originating in the

Eocene The Eocene ( ) Epoch is a geological epoch that lasted from about 56 to 33.9 million years ago (mya). It is the second epoch of the Paleogene Period in the modern Cenozoic Era. The name ''Eocene'' comes from the Ancient Greek (''ēṓs'', " ...

, about 40 Mya.

References

Bibliography

* * Phylogeny and biogeography of Altingiaceae
Altingiaceae
a

a
Missouri Botanical Garden Website

a
James L. Reveal

i
L. Watson and M.J. Dallwitz (1992 onwards). The families of flowering plants

i

{{Taxonbar, from=Q131360 Saxifragales families