Talk:Rosaceae

It'd be better if the characteristic morphological traits of Rosaceae, e.g. the possession of a hypanthium, were described. S.R. Hinsley, http://www.malvaceae.info

Please do! - MPF 21:50, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Yeah, no kidding! Unfortunately I don't know enough about it to do so, but I was rather disappointed that there weren't really any "distinguishing characteristics" given of such a major family! - 4.252.5.36 05:16, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

Lyonothamnus

Any idea where Lyonothamnus belongs? To its own tribe? Tom Radulovich 03:34, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Takhtajan's 1997 classification, which was the last major pre-molecular classification of plants, placed it in its own tribe and subfamily (he broke Rosaceae into 12(?) subfamilies, one of which has since been moved to Fabales). The cladogram at http://www.botany.utoronto.ca/faculty/dickinson/rosaceaeevolution/combinedtree.html places it as sister to the clade Maloideae+Prunoideae+Neillieae. I can't find any data to place it confidently in any particular grouping. It might be possible to do a metaanalysis on the sequences deposited in GenBank, but that would take quite a bit of effort, and the result is not necessarily superior to Dickinson's cladogram.

New Phylogeny Paper

There a new paper out on the phylogeny of Rosaceae - Phylogeny and classification of Rosaceae. Unfortunately it's behind a paywall, so I don't know what it says, but the abstract indicates that Dryadeae is promoted to subfamilial rank, and Maloideae and Amygdaloideae are sunk in Spiraeoideae. Lavateraguy (talk) 18:03, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

Economic Importance

I don't know how to do a citation needed tag, but I'm a little skeptical about Rosaceae being the 3rd most important plant family. I realize there's no precise/well defined metric for "importance", but I would think Solanaceae would be #3 after Poaceae and Fabaceae. From Apple and Potato, global potato production is 315 million metric tons, and apple production is 64 million tonnes. I'd suspect that production figures for tomatoes and tobacco also far outclass anything in Rosaceae. Rosaceae does seem like a strong contender for #4 in family importance though. 192.104.39.2 (talk) 18:06, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

For Rosaceae, apart from apples, there's pears, medlars, peaches, apricots, plums, almonds, cherries, raspberries, blackberries, loquats, plus the use of roses in the perfume and cut flower industries. These will all add up. But, on the other hand, there are several solanaceous crops in addition to potatoes, tomatoes and tabacco. I suspect that you are right. I'll add the tag for you.

Perhaps Brassicaceae should also be added to the mix (mostly Brassicas), or Malvaceae (cotton, kenaf, cacao, cola, durian, etc) Lavateraguy (talk) 20:13, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

Personally, I would have thought that, given the importance of the potato, that solanaceae would be the second most important family of angiosperms after the grass family. However, my main reason for this edit is that I saw the claim said "Citation needed". Well, it does say in Encyclopaedia Britannica that the rose family has produced a great variety of foods, but none that has been a stable food. ACEOREVIVED (talk) 21:21, 16 August 2011 (UTC)

I supppose the fact that none of the foods in rosaceae have been a staple food of any country would suggest that the economic importance of the family is not as great as that of solanaceae, as the potato has been a staple food in Ireland. ACEOREVIVED (talk) 10:15, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

Largest genera

"The largest genera are Sorbus, Crataegus and Cotoneaster". Did someone forget about Rubus? --195.130.92.43 (talk) 14:08, 27 October 2009 (UTC)>