Fabales is an

order Order, ORDER or Orders may refer to: * A socio-political or established or existing order, e.g. World order, Ancien Regime, Pax Britannica * Categorization, the process in which ideas and objects are recognized, differentiated, and understood ...

flowering plant Flowering plants are plants that bear flowers and fruits, and form the clade Angiospermae (). The term angiosperm is derived from the Ancient Greek, Greek words (; 'container, vessel') and (; 'seed'), meaning that the seeds are enclosed with ...

s included in the rosid group of the

eudicots The eudicots or eudicotyledons are flowering plants that have two seed leaves (cotyledons) upon germination. The term derives from ''dicotyledon'' (etymologically, ''eu'' = true; ''di'' = two; ''cotyledon'' = seed leaf). Historically, authors h ...

in the Angiosperm Phylogeny Group II classification system. In the APG II circumscription, this order includes the families

Fabaceae Fabaceae () or Leguminosae,International Code of Nomen ...

or legumes (including the subfamilies

Caesalpinioideae Caesalpinioideae is a botanical name at the rank of subfamily, placed in the large family Fabaceae or Leguminosae. Its name is formed from the generic name '' Caesalpinia''. It is known also as the peacock flower subfamily. The Caesalpinioideae a ...

Mimosoideae The Mimosoideae are a traditional subfamily of trees, herbs, lianas, and shrubs in the pea family (Fabaceae) that mostly grow in tropical and subtropical climates. They are typically characterized by having radially symmetric flowers, with petal ...

, and

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 ...

), Quillajaceae, Polygalaceae or milkworts (including the families Diclidantheraceae, Moutabeaceae, and Xanthophyllaceae), and

Surianaceae The Surianaceae are a family of plants in the order Fabales with five genera and eight known species. It has an unusual distribution: the genus '' Recchia'' is native to Mexico, and the sole member of '' Suriana'', '' S. maritima'', is a c ...

. Under the

Cronquist system The Cronquist system is a list of systems of plant taxonomy, taxonomic classification system of angiosperms, flowering plants. It was developed by Arthur Cronquist in a series of monographs and texts, including ''The Evolution and Classification of ...

and some other plant classification systems, the order Fabales contains only the family Fabaceae. In the classification system of Dahlgren the Fabales were in the

superorder Order () is one of the eight major hierarchical taxonomic ranks in Linnaean taxonomy. It is classified between family and class. In biological classification, the order is a taxonomic rank used in the classification of organisms and recognized ...

Fabiflorae (also called Fabanae) with three families corresponding to the subfamilies of Fabaceae in APG II. The other families treated in the Fabales by the APG II classification were placed in separate orders by Cronquist, the Polygalaceae within its own order, the Polygalales, and the Quillajaceae and Surianaceae within the

Rosales Rosales (, ) are an order of flowering plants. Peter F. Stevens (2001 onwards). "Rosales". At: Trees At: Angiosperm Phylogeny Website. At: Missouri Botanical Garden Website. (see ''External links'' below) Well-known members of Rosales include: ...

. The Fabaceae, as the third-largest plant family in the world, contain most of the diversity of the Fabales, the other families making up a comparatively small portion of the order's diversity. Research in the order is largely focused on the Fabaceae, due in part to its great biological diversity, and to its importance as food plants. The Polygalaceae are fairly well researched among plant families, in part due to the large diversity of the genus '' Polygala'', and other members of the family being food plants for various

Lepidoptera Lepidoptera ( ) or lepidopterans is an order (biology), order of winged insects which includes butterflies and moths. About 180,000 species of the Lepidoptera have been described, representing 10% of the total described species of living organ ...

(

butterfly Butterflies are winged insects from the lepidopteran superfamily Papilionoidea, characterized by large, often brightly coloured wings that often fold together when at rest, and a conspicuous, fluttering flight. The oldest butterfly fossi ...

and

moth Moths are a group of insects that includes all members of the order Lepidoptera that are not Butterfly, butterflies. They were previously classified as suborder Heterocera, but the group is Paraphyly, paraphyletic with respect to butterflies (s ...

) species. While taxonomists using molecular phylogenetic techniques find strong support for the order, questions remain about the morphological relationships of the Quillajaceae and Surianaceae to the rest of the order, due in part to limited research on these families. According to

molecular clock The molecular clock is a figurative term for a technique that uses the mutation rate of biomolecules to deduce the time in prehistory when two or more life forms diverged. The biomolecular data used for such calculations are usually nucleot ...

calculations, the lineage that led to Fabales split from other plants about 101 million years ago.

Distribution

The Fabales are a

cosmopolitan Cosmopolitan may refer to: Internationalism * World citizen, one who eschews traditional geopolitical divisions derived from national citizenship * Cosmopolitanism, the idea that all of humanity belongs to a single moral community * Cosmopolitan ...

order of plants, except only the subfamily Papilionoideae (Faboideae) of the Fabaceae are well dispersed throughout the northern part of the North Temperate Zone.

Phylogeny

The

phylogeny A phylogenetic tree or phylogeny is a graphical representation which shows the evolutionary history between a set of species or Taxon, taxa during a specific time.Felsenstein J. (2004). ''Inferring Phylogenies'' Sinauer Associates: Sunderland, M ...

of the Fabales is shown below.

Gallery

File:Desmodium gangeticum 2 W IMG 2769.jpg, '' Pleurolobus gangeticus'' Image:Lathyrus tuberosa (Guixa).jpg, Tuberous pea (''

Lathyrus tuberosus ''Lathyrus tuberosus'' (also known as the tuberous pea, tuberous vetchling, earthnut pea, aardaker, or tine-tare) is a small, vine, climbing perennial plant, native in moist temperate parts of Europe and Western Asia. The plant is a trailer or w ...

'') of the

Fabaceae Fabaceae () or Leguminosae,International Code of Nomen ...

Image:Quillaja saponaria.jpg, Soap bark tree (''

Quillaja saponaria ''Quillaja saponaria'', the soap bark tree or soapbark, is an evergreen tree in the family Quillajaceae, native to warm temperate central Chile. In Chile it occurs from 32nd parallel south, 32 to 40th parallel south, 40° South Latitude approxim ...

'') of the Quillajaceae Image:Polygala myrtifolia0.jpg, Milkwort (''Polygala myrtifolia'') of the Polygalaceae File:Polygala elongata in Talakona, AP I IMG 8388.jpg, Milkwort (''Polygala elongata'') of the Polygalaceae Image:Suriana maritima flowers.JPG, Bay cedar ('' Suriana maritima'' of the

References

{{Authority control Angiosperm orders