The ''Cladrastis'' clade is a
monophyletic
In cladistics for a group of organisms, monophyly is the condition of being a clade—that is, a group of taxa composed only of a common ancestor (or more precisely an ancestral population) and all of its lineal descendants. Monophyletic ...
clade of the
flowering plant
Flowering plants are plants that bear flowers and fruits, and form the clade Angiospermae (), commonly called angiosperms. They include all forbs (flowering plants without a woody stem), grasses and grass-like plants, a vast majority of ...
subfamily
Faboideae
The Faboideae are a subfamily of the flowering plant family Fabaceae or Leguminosae. An acceptable alternative name for the subfamily is Papilionoideae, or Papilionaceae when this group of plants is treated as a family.
This subfamily is widely ...
(or
Papilionaceae) that is found in eastern
Asia
Asia (, ) is one of the world's most notable geographical regions, which is either considered a continent in its own right or a subcontinent of Eurasia, which shares the continental landmass of Afro-Eurasia with Africa. Asia covers an ...
and southern
North America.
It is consistently resolved in
molecular phylogenies
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 ...
and is sister to the
Meso-Papilionoideae
Meso-Papilionoideae is a monophyletic clade of the flowering plant subfamily Faboideae (or Papilionoideae) that includes the majority of papilionoid legumes. This clade is consistently resolved in molecular phylogenies. It contains many agronomic ...
.
Evidence for the existence of this clade was first proposed based on morphological (floral), cytological, and biochemical evidence.
It is predicted to have diverged from the other legume lineages 47.4±2.6 million years ago (in the
Eocene
The Eocene ( ) Epoch is a geological epoch that lasted from about 56 to 33.9 million years ago (mya). It is the second epoch of the Paleogene Period in the modern Cenozoic Era. The name ''Eocene'' comes from the Ancient Greek (''ēṓs'', " ...
).
Description
This clade is composed of three genera: ''
Cladrastis'', the monotypic ''
Pickeringia'', and ''
Styphnolobium
''Styphnolobium'' is a small genus of three or four species of small trees and shrubs in the subfamily Faboideae of the pea family Fabaceae, formerly included within a broader interpretation of the genus '' Sophora''. It was recently assigned t ...
''.
Fossils of species of ''Cladrastis'' and ''Styphnolobium'' have been discovered.
The name of this clade is informal and is not assumed to have any particular
taxonomic rank
In biological classification, taxonomic rank is the relative level of a group of organisms (a taxon) in an ancestral or hereditary hierarchy. A common system consists of species, genus, family, order, class, phylum, kingdom, domain. While ol ...
like the names authorized by the
ICBN
The ''International Code of Nomenclature for algae, fungi, and plants'' (ICN) is the set of rules and recommendations dealing with the formal botanical names that are given to plants, fungi and a few other groups of organisms, all those "trad ...
or the
ICPN.
The clade is defined as:
"The most inclusive crown clade
In phylogenetics, the crown group or crown assemblage is a collection of species composed of the living representatives of the collection, the most recent common ancestor of the collection, and all descendants of the most recent common ancestor. ...
containing '' Cladrastis kentukea'' (Dum. Cours.) Rudd 1971 but not ''Dermatophyllum secundiflorum
''Dermatophyllum secundiflorum'' is a species of flowering shrub or small tree in the family Fabaceae that is native to the Southwestern United States (Texas, New Mexico) and Mexico (Chihuahua and Coahuila south to Hidalgo, Puebla, and Queré ...
'' (Ortega) Gandhi & Reveal 2011 or ''Swartzia simplex
''Swartzia'' is a genus of flowering plants in the family Fabaceae. It was named in honor of Swedish botanist Olof Swartz and contains about 200 species. ''Swartzia'' is restricted in its geographical distribution to the New World Tropics, where ...
'' Spreng. 1825."
References
External links
The ''Cladrastis'' clade at the Tree of Life
Cladrastis clade
Plant unranked clades
{{Faboideae-stub