Agapanthoideae

This article may be expanded with text translated from the corresponding article in the Spanish Wikipedia. (December 2009) Don't speak Spanish? Click here to read a machine-translated version of the Spanish article. Click [show] on the right to review important translation instructions before translating. Google's machine translation is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into English Wikipedia. Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article. After translating, {{Translated|es|Agapanthaceae}} must be added to the talk page to ensure copyright compliance. For more guidance, see Wikipedia:Translation.

Agapanthoideae
Agapanthus africanus
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Plantae
clade:	Angiosperms
clade:	Monocots
Order:	Asparagales
Family:	Amaryllidaceae
Subfamily:	Agapanthoideae
Genera
Agapanthus L'Hér.
Distribution

Agapanthoideae is a monocot subfamily of flowering plants in the family Amaryllidaceae, order Asparagales. It was formerly treated as a separate family, Agapanthaceae.^[1] The subfamily name is derived from the generic name of the sole included type genus, Agapanthus. Previously the genus Agapanthus has also been included in the Alliaceae (e.g. in the Dahlgren system) or the Liliaceae (e.g. in the Cronquist system, which unlike most classification systems included both Alliaceae and Amaryllidaceae in a broadly defined Liliaceae).

Agapanthus shares characters with other genera included in the modern Amaryllidaceae, but lacks the compounds that give alliaceous plants (subfamily Allioideae) their characteristic onion or garlic odor, and has superior ovaries, unlike the usually inferior ovaries of subfamily Amaryllidoideae.

Ecology

Agapanthus is a genus endemic to South Africa. The evergreen species come from regions where rain during the winter is common (Province of the Western Cape and Province of the Eastern Cape), replace some of their foliage from the stalk apex. Decidious species come from regions with seasonal rain (Province of the Eastern Cape, KwaZulu-Natal, Lesoto, Mpumalanga, Limpopo, Swaziland, Free State and Mozambique. These species grow fast during the spring when the rain starts and then shed their foliage completely during the winter. All the species in this genus are distributed in regions with annual mean rainfall of over 500mm and 2000m MSL.

Taxonomy

The genus was established by L'Heritier in 1788. From its inclusion, which family it belongs to has been a matter of debate. For decades, Agapanthus was placed under the Liliaceae family (Cronquist 1919). It was subsequently moved under Amaryllidaceae and later Alliaceae. The Angiosperm Fylogenetic Classfication Group in their 1998 accepted all three as independent families within the Asparagales Order. In their 2003 work, the recognition of Agapanthaceae was optional given they could be included within the Alliaceae family sensu lato.

In their 2009 publication, the APGIII system confirmed the criteria that included the three families within the Alliaceae, relegating Agapanthus to a subfamily taxa.

However, instead of maintaining the Alliaceae name, the proposal from taxonomist Alan W. Meerow of using the Amaryllidaceae name was widely accepted.

Genera

• Agapanthus – the sole genus in the subfamily

References

1. ^ Chase, M.W.; Reveal, J.L. & Fay, M.F. (2009), "A subfamilial classification for the expanded asparagalean families Amaryllidaceae, Asparagaceae and Xanthorrhoeaceae", Botanical Journal of the Linnean Society 161 (2): 132–136, doi:10.1111/j.1095-8339.2009.00999.x 

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Agapanthaceae

• NCBI Taxonomy Browser
• links at CSDL, Texas