Proteales

Life-forms

Classification System: APG IV

Superregnum: Eukaryota
Regnum: Plantae
Cladus: Angiosperms
Cladus: Eudicots
Ordo: Proteales
Familiae: Nelumbonaceae - Platanaceae - Proteaceae – Sabiaceae

Name

Proteales Juss. ex Bercht. & J.Presl, Prir. Rostlin (1820).
Typus: Protea L. Mant. Pl. 187, 194, 328. (1771).

References

Jussieu, A.L. de (1820) O Prirozenosti Rostlin.
Stevens, P.F. 2001 onwards. Angiosperm Phylogeny Website. Version 14, July 2017 [and more or less continuously updated since]. Online. Reference page.
Soltis, D. E. et al. (2011) Angiosperm phylogeny: 17 genes, 640 taxa. American Journal of Botany 98: 704–730.

Vernacular names
magyar: Próteavirágúak
polski: Srebrnikowce
中文: 山龙眼目

Proteales is an order of flowering plants consisting of three (or four) families. The Proteales have been recognized by almost all taxonomists.

The representatives of the Proteales are very different from each other. The order contains plants that do not look alike at all. What they have in common is seeds with little or no endosperm . The ovules are often atropic.

Families

In the classification system of Dahlgren the Proteales were in the superorder Proteiflorae (also called Proteanae). The APG II system of 2003 also recognizes this order, and places it in the clade eudicots with this circumscription:

order Proteales

family Nelumbonaceae
family Proteaceae [+ family Platanaceae]

with "+ ..." = optionally separate family (that may be split off from the preceding family).

The APG III system of 2009 followed this same approach, but favored the narrower circumscription of the three families, firmly recognizing three families in Proteales: Nelumbonaceae, Platanaceae, and Proteaceae.[1] The Angiosperm Phylogeny Website, however, suggests the addition of Sabiaceae, which the APG III system did not place in any order in the eudicots, would be sensible.[2]

The APG IV system of 2016 added family Sabiaceae to the order.[3]

Well-known members of the Proteales include the proteas of South Africa, the banksias and macadamias of Australia, the London plane, and the sacred lotus. The origins of the order are clearly ancient, with evidence of diversification in the mid-Cretaceous, over 100 million years ago. Of interest are the current family distributions, with the Proteaceae a mostly Southern Hemisphere family, while the Platanaceae and Nelumbonaceae are Northern Hemisphere plants.
Classification

The current APG IV classification represents a slight change from the APG I system of 1998, which firmly did accept family Platanaceae as being separate from the order. Under APG IV, this is the current circumscription of the order:

order Proteales

family Nelumbonaceae
family Platanaceae
family Proteaceae
family Sabiaceae

Cronquist

The Cronquist system of 1981 recognized such an order and placed it in subclass Rosidae in class Magnoliopsida [=dicotyledons]. It used this circumscription:

order Proteales

family Elaeagnaceae
family Proteaceae

Dahlgren; Thorne; Engler; and Wettstein

The Dahlgren system and Thorne system (1992) recognized such an order and placed it in superorder Proteanae in subclass Magnoliidae [=dicotyledons]. The Engler system, in its update of 1964, also recognized this order and placed it in subclass Archichlamydeae of class Dicotyledoneae. The Wettstein system, last revised in 1935, recognized this order and placed it in the Monochlamydeae in subclass Choripetalae of class Dicotyledones. These systems used the following circumscription:

order Proteales

family Proteaceae

References

Angiosperm Phylogeny Group (2009), "An update of the Angiosperm Phylogeny Group classification for the orders and families of flowering plants: APG III", Botanical Journal of the Linnean Society, 161 (2): 105–121, doi:10.1111/j.1095-8339.2009.00996.x
Stevens, P. F. (2001 onwards). Angiosperm Phylogeny Website. Version 12, July 2012 [and more or less continuously updated since]. Proteales. Accessed online: 9 June 2013.
Angiosperm Phylogeny Group (2016). "An update of the Angiosperm Phylogeny Group classification for the orders and families of flowering plants: APG IV". Botanical Journal of the Linnean Society. 181 (1): 1–20. doi:10.1111/boj.12385.