The Cornaceae are a

cosmopolitan family In biogeography, cosmopolitan distribution is the term for the range of a taxon that extends across all or most of the world in appropriate habitats. Such a taxon, usually a species, is said to exhibit cosmopolitanism or cosmopolitism. The extr ...

flowering plant Flowering plants are plants that bear flowers and fruits, and form the clade Angiospermae (), commonly called angiosperms. The term "angiosperm" is derived from the Greek words ('container, vessel') and ('seed'), and refers to those plants t ...

s in the order

Cornales The Cornales are an order of flowering plants, early diverging among the asterids, containing about 600 species. Plants within the Cornales usually have four-parted flowers, drupaceous fruits, and inferior to half-inferior gynoecia topped with ...

. The family contains approximately 85 species in two genera, ''

Alangium ''Alangium'' is a small genus of flowering plants. The genus is included either in a broad view of the dogwood family Cornaceae, or as the sole member of its own family Alangiaceae.Qiu-Yun (Jenny) Xiang, David T. Thomas, and Qiao Ping Xiang. ...

'' and ''

Cornus ''Cornus'' is a genus of about 30–60 species of woody plants in the family Cornaceae, commonly known as dogwoods, which can generally be distinguished by their blossoms, berries, and distinctive bark. Most are deciduous trees or shrub ...

''. They are mostly trees and shrubs, which may be deciduous or evergreen, although a few species are perennial herbs. Members of the family usually have opposite or alternate simple leaves, four- or five-parted flowers clustered in

inflorescence An inflorescence is a group or cluster of flowers arranged on a Plant stem, stem that is composed of a main branch or a complicated arrangement of branches. Morphology (biology), Morphologically, it is the modified part of the shoot of sperma ...

s or pseudanthia, and

drupaceous In botany, a drupe (or stone fruit) is an indehiscent fruit in which an outer fleshy part (exocarp, or skin, and mesocarp, or flesh) surrounds a single shell (the ''pit'', ''stone'', or ''pyrena'') of hardened endocarp with a seed (''kernel'') ...

fruits.Kubitzki, K. (2004). Cornaceae. In ''The Families and Genera of Vascular Plants Volume 6: Flowering Plants: Dicotyledons: Celastrales, Oxidales, Rosales, Cornales, Ericales'' (Kubitzki, ed.). Springer-Verlag, New York. The family is primarily distributed in northern temperate regions and tropical Asia. In northern temperate areas, Cornaceae are well known from the dogwoods ''

''. The systematics of Cornaceae has been remarkably unsettled and controversial, and many genera have been added to it and removed from it over time. (One researcher called it a "dustbin".Eyde, R. H. (1988). Comprehending ''Cornus'' - puzzles and progress in the systematics of the dogwoods. ''Botanical Review'' 54, 233-351.)

Molecular phylogenetics Molecular phylogenetics () is the branch of phylogeny that analyzes genetic, hereditary molecular differences, predominantly in DNA sequences, to gain information on an organism's evolutionary relationships. From these analyses, it is possible to ...

have clarified the relatedness of some associated genera, and at least nine genera that were previously included in Cornaceae have been eliminated from the order Cornales entirely,Fan, C. Z., and Xiang, Q. Y. (2003). Phylogenetic analyses of Cornales based on 26S rRNA and combined 26S rDNA-matK-rbcL sequence data. ''American Journal of Botany'' 90, 1357-1372. but the circumscription of Cornaceae is still unclear. The

Angiosperm Phylogeny Group The Angiosperm Phylogeny Group (APG) is an informal international group of systematic botanists who collaborate to establish a consensus on the taxonomy of flowering plants (angiosperms) that reflects new knowledge about plant relationships disc ...

usually defines Cornaceae as comprising the genera ''

'' and ''

'' as well as five genera now separated into the family

Nyssaceae Nyssaceae is a family of flowering trees sometimes included in the dogwood family (Cornaceae). Nyssaceae is composed of 37 known species in the following five genera:Averyanov, L. V. & Hiep, N. T. (2002). ''Diplopanax vietnamensis'', a New Specie ...

. However, many of these genera are sometimes split off into their own families (e.g.

Alangiaceae Alangiaceae was recognized as a small family of small dicotyledon trees, shrubs or lianas, closely related to the Cornaceae (dogwood family). There is only one genus, '' Alangium'', with seventeen species. The APG II states that Alangiaceae is ...

), and the usage remains inconsistent.

Fossil record

The oldest

fossil A fossil (from Classical Latin , ) is any preserved remains, impression, or trace of any once-living thing from a past geological age. Examples include bones, shells, exoskeletons, stone imprints of animals or microbes, objects preserved ...

that can be related to Cornaceae is †''Hironoia fusiformis'', an extinct taxon collected from the Futaba Group sediments at Kamitikaba, Japan. Synapomorphies of the fruits of the fossil occur also in extant Cornaceae. The age of the sediments is of early Coniacian to early Santonian (about 88 Ma). Although the mosaic of characters in ''Hironoia'' precludes assignment to an extant genus, the fiber rather than sclereid composition of the fruit places it within the

-Mastixiaceae. Other possible Cornaceae from

Cretaceous The Cretaceous ( ) is a geological period that lasted from about 145 to 66 million years ago (Mya). It is the third and final period of the Mesozoic Era, as well as the longest. At around 79 million years, it is the longest geological period of ...

sediments include

endocarp Fruit anatomy is the plant anatomy of the internal structure of fruit. Fruits are the mature ovary or ovaries of one or more flowers. They are found in three main anatomical categories: aggregate fruits, multiple fruits, and simple fruits. Aggr ...

s resembling

from the Santonian-

Campanian The Campanian is the fifth of six ages of the Late Cretaceous Epoch on the geologic timescale of the International Commission on Stratigraphy (ICS). In chronostratigraphy, it is the fifth of six stages in the Upper Cretaceous Series. Campani ...

mesofossil assemblage of

Åsen Åsen is a village in Levanger municipality in Trøndelag county, Norway. The village is located between the lakes Hammervatnet Hammervatnet is a lake in the municipality of Levanger in Trøndelag county, Norway. The lake lies on the north s ...

. In slightly younger

Late Cretaceous The Late Cretaceous (100.5–66 Ma) is the younger of two epochs into which the Cretaceous Period is divided in the geologic time scale. Rock strata from this epoch form the Upper Cretaceous Series. The Cretaceous is named after ''creta'', ...

sediments (

Maastrichtian The Maastrichtian () is, in the ICS geologic timescale, the latest age (uppermost stage) of the Late Cretaceous Epoch or Upper Cretaceous Series, the Cretaceous Period or System, and of the Mesozoic Era or Erathem. It spanned the interval ...

) four genera of

mastixioid fruits (''Beckettia'', ''Eomastixia'', ''Mastixicarpum'' and ''Mastixiopsis'') have been described from

Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...

.Hironoia fusiformis gen. et sp. nov.; a cornalean fruit from the Kamikitaba locality (Upper Cretaceous, Lower Coniacian) in northeastern Japan by Masamichi Takahashi,Peter R. Crane and Steven R Manchester, Article · January 2003, DOI: 10.1007/s10265-002-0062-6 · Source: PubMed.

References

External links

Cornaceae on the Angiosperm Phylogeny Website of the Missouri Botanical Garden
{{Authority control Asterid families