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| Zingiberales Fossil range: 80 Ma Late Cretaceous - Recent |
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 Alpinia zerumbet, a popular ornamental of the Zingerbaceae.
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Zingiberales is an order of flowering plants. The order has been widely recognised by the taxonomists, at least for the past few decades. This order includes many familiar plants like ginger, cardamom, turmeric, galangal and myoga of the Zingiberaceae or ginger family, and bananas and plantains of the Musaceae or banana family, along with arrowroot of the Marantaceae or arrowroot family.
It is considered that the Zingiberales together with the Commelinales evolved around 80 millions of years ago during the Late Cretaceous.
The APG II system, of 2003 (unchanged from the APG system, 1998), recognises this order and assigns it to the clade commelinids, in the monocots. It is circumscribed as:
- order Zingiberales
- family Cannaceae
- family Costaceae
- family Heliconiaceae
- family Lowiaceae
- family Marantaceae
- family Musaceae
- family Strelitziaceae
- family Zingiberaceae
The Cronquist system, also recognised this order consisting of the same eight families, but organized the order in the subclass Zingiberidae of the class Liliopsida [=monocotyledons].
Earlier systems, such as the Wettstein system, last revised in 1935, and the Engler system, updated in 1964, recognised a similar order (containing the same plants, although divided over fewer families) Scitamineae.
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- This page was last modified on 14 November 2008, at 00:19.
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