Asterales: Introduction and Conspectus

Abstract

Asterales (incl. Campanulales of many authors), with Alseuosmiaceae, Argophyllaceae, Composi-tae (= Asteraceae), Calyceraceae, Campanulaceae (incl. Cyphiaceae, Lobeliaceae, Nemacladaceae), Carpodetaceae (included in Rousseaceae by APG II 2003), Goodeniaceae, Menyanthaceae, Pentaphragmataceae, Phellinaceae, Rousseaceae and Stylidiaceae (incl. Donatiaceae), contain about 26,300 species in c. 1,720 genera. The large majority of species and genera belong to Compositae and Campanulaceae. The order is well supported in all major molecular phylogenetic analyses (APG II 2003), and is part of the Euasterids II or Campanulids sensu Bremer et al. (2002). Phylogenetic structure within Campanulids (also containing Apiales, Aquifoliales, Dipsacales and several families of uncertain ordinal placement ; APG II 2003) is not sufficiently well resolved to identify the sister group of Asterales. It appears to be evident, however, that of all representatives of the Campanulids, Aquifoliales are least closely related to Asterales (Savolainen et al. 2000a, b; Soltis et al. 2000; Albach et al. 2001; Bremer et al. 2001, 2002). Although several of the constituent families of the order had been recognized to be closely related to one another long ago (for discussion, see Lammers 1992), the recognition of the relationship of others to Asterales (Lundberg and Bremer 2003) is the result mainly (but not only) of recent molecular phylogenetic work. This applies particularly to Alseuosmiaceae (Backlund and Bremer