The straw that broke Malpighiales' back

[John Grehan]

Ken,

It might be good for those of us on the list who are interested, but less
savvy, in angiosperm systematics to list the character choices you make in
comparison to other classifications with which you disagree. Otherwise the
significance of your dispute (or agreement) with various classification is
obscure to the less informed like myself. Perhaps a listing of families
included within ordinal groupings would also help as this seems to vary
somewhat between different schemes.

Many thanks, John

At 03:52 PM 2/2/04 -0600, Ken Kinman wrote:
>I think overall the ordinal classification of APG is pretty good.  Among
>monocots I only trimmed back their Poales and Asparagales, which revived
>some well-known Orders like Bromeliales, Iridales, etc.
>       What really worries me about their huge Malpighiales is that I have
> severe doubts about its holophyly (strict monophyly).  If it were even
> slightly paraphyletic, it wouldn't worry me much, but I believe it will
> turn out to be either highly paraphyletic or worse yet polyphyletic!  It
> seems to me splitting it is a "win-win" situation, both in the size of
> the taxa and avoiding polyphyly.
>       I thought the note at the Angiosperm Phylogeny Website (about
> Cymothoe feeding just on "Malpighiales" sensu lato) was interesting, so I
> checked on this a little.  Actually they seem to concentrate on families
> which I listed in Violales.  Other occurrences seem pretty scattered (at
> least one in what I call Hypericales, and a couple in the asterid order
> Lamiales).  Perhaps there are other scattered occurrences, but Cymothoe
> seems to really prefer hosts in Order Violales.
>              ------ Cheers,
>                          Ken
>P.S.  Is anyone in favor of splitting Theales out of APG's "Ericalean"
>Order?  I haven't decided on that one yet, but it looks a little
>suspicious to me (although less so than their "Malpighialean" grouping).