Salicornioideae

Salicornioideae
Salicornia europaea
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Plantae
(unranked): Angiosperms
(unranked): Eudicots
(unranked): Core eudicots
Order: Caryophyllales
Family: Amaranthaceae
Subfamily: Salicornioideae
Ulbr.
Genera

About 11 genera, see text

The Salicornioideae is a subfamily of the Amaranthaceae, formerly in family Chenopodiaceae.[1]

Description

The Salicornioideae have articulated, succulent stems and strongly reduces leaves. The flowers are aggregated in thick, dense spike-shaped thyrses.

Photosynthesis pathway

The majority of the Salicornieae species are C3-plants. The only species that has developed C4-photosynthesis is Tecticornia indica (syn. Halosarcia indica).[2]

Distribution and Evolution

Plants from the Salicornioideae are found around the world. All are halophytes, growing in coastal or inland saline habitats.

They originated in Eurasia about 38-28 million years ago (Late Eocene/Early Oligocene) and radiated rapidly. Already in the Middle Miocene, about 19-14 million years ago, all major lines were present.

Systematics

Sarcocornia perennis
Halocnemum strobilaceum

The taxon was first published in 1849 by Alfred Moquin-Tandon (in: A. De Candolle (ed.): Prodromus Systematis Naturalis Regni Vegetabilis, Vol. 13(2)) as a tribe Salicornieae within the family Chenopodiaceae. in 1934, Oskar Eberhard Ulbrich raised the taxon to subfamily level and named it Salicornioideae (in: A. Engler & K. Prantl (eds.): Die natürlichen Pflanzenfamilien, ed. 2, Vol. 16c).

The family Chenopodiaceae is now included in Amaranthaceae s.l.[3]

Phylogenetic research by Kadereit et al. (2006) supports the monophyly of the subfamily. It comprises just one tribe, Salicornieae.

References

  1. Shepherd, K.A.; M. Waycott and A. Calladine (2004), "Radiation of the Australian Salicornioideae (Chenopodiaceae)--based on evidence from nuclear and chloroplast DNA sequences", American Journal of Botany 91 (9): 1387, doi:10.3732/ajb.91.9.1387, retrieved 2008-05-26
  2. Gudrun Kadereit, Thomas Borsch, K. Weising, Helmut Freitag (2003): Phylogeny of Amaranthaceae and Chenopodiaceae and the evolution of C4 photosynthesis. - In: International Journal of Plant Sciences 164(6), p.979.
  3. Kai Müller & Thomas Borsch (2005): Phylogenetics of Amaranthaceae using matK/trnK sequence data – evidence from parsimony, likelihood and Bayesian approaches, In: Annals of the Missouri Botanical Garden, 92, p. 66-102.
  4. 4.0 4.1 Shepherd, Kelly A.; Wilson, Paul G. (2007), "Incorporation of the Australian genera Halosarcia, Pachycornia, Sclerostegia and Tegicornia into Tecticornia (Salicornioideae, Chenopodiaceae)", Australian Systematic Botany 20: 319, doi:10.1071/SB07002
  5. A. E. Yaprak & Gudrun Kadereit (2008): A new species of Halocnemum M.Bieb. (Amaranthaceae) from southern Turkey. Botanical Journal of the Linnean Society, 158. 716–721. doi:10.1111/j.1095-8339.2008.00910.x
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Salicornioideae.
Wikispecies has information related to: Salicornioideae