The basal angiosperms are the first flowering plants to diverge from the ancestral angiosperm. In particular, the most basal angiosperms are the so-called ANITA grade which is made up of Amborella (a single species of shrub from New Caledonia), Nymphaeales (water lilies, together with some other aquatic plants) and Austrobaileyales (woody aromatic plants including star anise).[1] ANITA stands for the genera Amborella, Nymphaea, Illicium, Trimenia and Austrobaileya.
The basal angiosperms are only a few hundred species, compared with hundreds of thousands of species of eudicots, monocots or magnoliids. They diverged from the ancestral angiosperm before the five groups comprising the mesangiosperms diverged from each other.
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The exact relationships between Amborella, Nymphaeales and Austrobaileyales are not yet clear. Although most studies show that Amborella and Nymphaeales are more basal than Austrobaileyales, and all three are more basal than the mesangiosperms, there is significant molecular evidence in favor of two different trees, one in which Amborella is sister to the rest of the angiosperms, and one in which a clade of Amborella and Nymphaeales is in this position:[2]
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Paleodicots (sometimes spelled "palaeodicots") is an informal name used by botanists (Spichiger & Savolainen 1997[3], Leitch et al. 1998[4]) to refer to angiosperms which are not monocots or eudicots.
The paleodicots correspond to Magnoliidae sensu Cronquist 1981 (minus Ranunculales and Papaverales) and to Magnoliidae sensu Takhtajan 1980 (Spichiger & Savolainen 1997). Some of the paleodicots share apparently plesiomorphic characters with monocots, e.g., scattered vascular bundles, trimerous flowers, and non-tricolpate pollen.
The "paleodicots" are not a monophyletic group and the term has not been widely adopted. The APG II system does not recognize a group called "paleodicots" but assigns these early-diverging dicots to several orders and unplaced families: Amborellaceae, Nymphaeaceae (including Cabombaceae), Austrobaileyales, Ceratophyllales (not included among the "paleodicots" by Leitch et al. 1998), Chloranthaceae, and the magnoliid clade (orders Canellales, Piperales, Laurales, and Magnoliales). Subsequent research has added Hydatellaceae to the paleodicots.
The term paleoherb is another older term for flowering plants which are neither eudicots nor monocots.[5]