Olacaceae

Description

Olacaceae is a family of flowering plants in the order Santalales. They are woody plants, native throughout the tropical regions of the world. As of July 2021, the circumscription of the family varies; some sources maintain a broad family, others split it into seven segregate families. The 1998 APG system and the 2003 APG II system assign it to the order Santalales in the clade core eudicots. Prior to the advent of molecular data, the circumscription of the family Olacaceae varied widely between different authorities. Among these various classifications, about 30 genera were included in the family. 15 genera are recognized for Olacaceae by the Germplasm Resources Information Network. The phylogenetic investigation published in 2008 recovered seven clades that were well-supported by molecular and morphological characters, but no formal taxonomic reorganization of the family was proposed. For this reason, Olacaceae in the broad sense was adopted by the APG III-system. The formal reconfiguration of this family (as well as the rest of the order Santalales) was published by Nickrent and co-workers in 2010 and this concept is shown below. Olacaceae in the broad sense was split into seven families, and the genus Schoepfia was placed with Arjona and Quinchamalium (both previously Santalaceae) in the family Schoepfiaceae.