Commelinales is an order of

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. It comprises five families: Commelinaceae, Haemodoraceae, Hanguanaceae,

Philydraceae Philydraceae is a family of flowering plants composed of three genera and a total of six known species. Such a family has not been recognized by many taxonomists. The APG II system, of 2003 (unchanged from the APG system, of 1998), does recogni ...

, and Pontederiaceae. All the families combined contain over 885 species in about 70 genera; the majority of species are in the Commelinaceae. Plants in the order share a number of

synapomorphies In phylogenetics, an apomorphy (or derived trait) is a novel character or character state that has evolved from its ancestral form (or plesiomorphy). A synapomorphy is an apomorphy shared by two or more taxa and is therefore hypothesized to hav ...

that tie them together, such as a lack of mycorrhizal associations and tapetal raphides. Estimates differ as to when the Commelinales evolved, but most suggest an origin and diversification sometime during the mid- to late

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 ...

. Depending on the methods used, studies suggest a range of origin between 123 and 73 million years, with diversification occurring within the group 110 to 66 million years ago. The order's closest relatives are in the Zingiberales, which includes

ginger Ginger (''Zingiber officinale'') is a flowering plant whose rhizome, ginger root or ginger, is widely used as a spice and a folk medicine. It is a herbaceous perennial which grows annual pseudostems (false stems made of the rolled bases of ...

banana A banana is an elongated, edible fruit – botanically a berry (botany), berry – produced by several kinds of large herbaceous flowering plants in the genus ''Musa (genus), Musa''. In some countries, Cooking banana, bananas used for ...

s, cardamom, and others.Stevens, P. F. (2001 onwards). Angiosperm Phylogeny Website. Version 9, November 2011.

Taxonomy

According to the most recent classification scheme, the APG IV of 2016, the order includes five families: * Commelinaceae * Haemodoraceae * Hanguanaceae *

* Pontederiaceae This is unchanged from the APG III of 2009 and the APG II of 2003, but different from the older APG system of 1998, which did not include Hanguanaceae.

Previous classification systems

The older

Cronquist system The Cronquist system is a taxonomic classification system of flowering plants. It was developed by Arthur Cronquist in a series of monographs and texts, including ''The Evolution and Classification of Flowering Plants'' (1968; 2nd edition, 1988) ...

of 1981, which was based purely on morphological data, placed the order in subclass Commelinidae of class Liliopsida and included the families Commelinaceae, Mayacaceae, Rapateaceae and Xyridaceae. These families are now known to be only distantly related. In the classification system of Dahlgren the Commelinales were one of four orders in the superorder Commeliniflorae (also called Commelinanae), and contained five families, of which only Commelinaceae has been retained by the Angiosperm Phylogeny Group.

References

* * {{Taxonbar, from=Q290349 Angiosperm orders Extant Campanian first appearances