Adoxaceae
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| iAdoxaceae | ||||||||||
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 Adoxa moschatellina
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| Adoxa L. |
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The Adoxaceae is a small family of flowering plants in the order Dipsacales, as now constituted comprising three genera and about 150-200 species. It is characterised by opposite toothed leaves, small five- or, more rarely, four-petalled flowers in cymose inflorescences, and the fruit being a drupe. They are thus similar to many Cornaceae.
In older classifications this family was entirely comprised into Caprifoliaceae (the honeysuckle family), Adoxa moschatellina (Moschatel) being the first plant to be put into this new group. Much later, the genera Sambucus (elders) and Viburnum were added after careful morphological analysis of biochemical tests by the Angiosperm Phylogeny Group.
Moschatel is a small perennial herbaceous plant, flowering early in the spring and dying down to ground level in summer immediately after the berries are mature; the leaves are compound.
The elders are mostly shrubs, but two species are large herbaceous plants; all have compound leaves. The viburnums are all shrubs, with simple leaves.
