Lophiocarpaceae

Lophiocarpaceae

Synonymy

Lophiocarpaceae Doweld & Reveal in Phytologia 90: 416. 2008 sec. APG [Angiosperm Phylogeny Group] 2016

Content

Introduction

Small family of about six species distributed in Africa, mainly in southwest Africa, and southwest Asia (Endress & Bittrich 1993; Rohwer 1993). The family includes the genus Lophiocarpus, previously placed in Phytolaccaceae subfamily Microteoideae and the genus Corbichonia, previously placed in Molluginaceae. The clade Lophiocarpus+Corbichonia was first recovered and well-supported in the molecular phylogeny based on matK sequences by Cuénoud & al. (2002). The family was described by Doweld and Reveal (2008) and the clade was later confirmed by Schäferhoff & al. (2009) and Brockington & al. (2011).
The two genera included in Lophiocarpaceae are morphologically very different. While members of Lophiocarpus are herbs and sometimes suffrutescent, characterised by flowers in spikes (with five tepals and four stamens) and achenes (Rohwer 1993), members of Corbichonia are herbs or subshrubs, characterised by flowers in cymes (with five sepals, several petaloid staminodes and stamens) and capsules (Endress & Bittrich 1993; Boulos 1999; Sukhorukov & Kushunina 2015).A
A. Hernández-Ledesma, P., Berendsohn, W.G., Borsch, T., von Mering, S., Akhani, H., Arias, S., Castañeda-Noa, I., Eggli, U., Eriksson, R., Flores-Olvera, H., Fuentes-Bazán, S., Kadereit, G., Klak, C., Korotkova, N. & Nyffeler, R. 2015: A taxonomic backbone for the global synthesis of species diversity in the angiosperm order Caryophyllales. – Willdenowia 45(3): 281-383