Garryales

▪ plant order

      small order of flowering plants consisting of 18 species in 2 families, Garryaceae and Eucommiaceae. Members of the order are woody, with distinct male and female plants.

 Garryaceae are evergreen shrubs and trees with opposite, nonstipulate leaves that are basally joined. They have flowers with an inferior ovary and berry fruits, and they have only one well-developed whorl of the perianth. Garrya is a genus of 13 species from western North America, Central America, and the West Indies, some of them with highly toxic alkaloids similar to those of Aconitum ( monkshood) and Delphinium ( larkspur) in the distantly related Ranunculaceae. Garrya elliptica (feverbush) is cultivated as an ornamental and was formerly used medicinally. The other genus in the family is Aucuba, with four East Asian species. A. japonica (Japanese laurel) is an important ornamental shrub grown for its glossy green foliage, especially the showy yellow-spotted cultivar “Variegata.”

 Eucommiaceae includes a single species (Eucommia ulmoides), native to China. This is a wind-pollinated tree with spirally arranged, simple, toothed leaves. It contains latex cells that cause the leaves to be held together by strands of gum when they are pulled apart in the middle. This gum, or gutta, has been used for tooth fillings and for insulating electrical cables. The plant is no longer known in the wild, but it is widely cultivated in China for furniture and fuel. Its bark is also used medicinally as a tonic and for arthritis. In its small wind-pollinated flowers, with two spreading stigmas and winged fruits, it resembles Ulmus (elm tree), but this is only a superficial resemblance, and the two are not closely related.

      Garryales is placed in the asterid clade (organisms with a single common ancestor), or sympetalous lineage of flowering plants, at the base of the Asterid I group of the Angiosperm Phylogeny Group II (APG II) botanical classification system (see angiosperm).

Paul E. Berry

 

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