Rutaceae
The Rutaceae is a family, commonly known as the rue[3] or
Rutaceae
citrus family,[4] of flowering plants, usually placed in the order
Sapindales.
Species of the family generally have flowers that divide into four
or five parts, usually with strong scents. They range in form and
size from herbs to shrubs and large[5] trees.
The most economically important genus in the family is Citrus,
which includes the orange (C. × sinensis), lemon (C. × limon),
grapefruit (C. × paradisi), and lime (various, mostly C.
aurantifolia, the key lime). Boronia is a large Australian genus, Skimmia japonica
some members of which are plants with highly fragrant flowers
and are used in commercial oil production. Other large genera Scientific classification
include Zanthoxylum, Melicope, and Agathosma. About 160 Kingdom: Plantae
genera are in the family Rutaceae.
Clade: Tracheophytes
Clade: Angiosperms
Contents Clade: Eudicots
Characteristics Clade: Rosids
Taxonomy Order: Sapindales
Subfamilies
Family: Rutaceae
Notable species Juss., 1789 [1]
References
Subfamilies
External links
Amyridoideae
Aurantioideae
Characteristics
Cneoroideae
Most species are trees or shrubs, a few are herbs (the type genus Haplophylloideae
Ruta, Boenninghausenia and Dictamnus), frequently aromatic
Rutoideae
with glands on the leaves, sometimes with thorns. The leaves are
usually opposed and compound, and without stipules. Pellucid Zanthoxyloideae
glands, a type of oil gland, are found in the leaves responsible
Diversity
for the aromatic smell of the family's members; traditionally they
have been the primary synapomorphic characteristic to identify About 160 genera, totaling over
the Rutaceae. 1600 species
Flowers are bractless, solitary or in cyme, rarely in raceme, and
mainly pollinated by insects. They are radially or (rarely)
laterally symmetric, and generally hermaphroditic. They have
four or five petals and sepals, sometimes three, mostly separate,
eight to ten stamen (five in Skimmia, many in Citrus), usually
separate or in several groups. Usually a single stigma with 2 to 5
united carpels, sometimes ovaries separate but styles combined.
The fruit of the Rutaceae are very variable: berries, drupes,
hesperidia, samaras, capsules, and follicles all occur. Seed
number also varies widely. Range of subfamily Rutoideae sensu
Groppo et al., 2012
Taxonomy
The family is closely related to the Sapindaceae, Simaroubaceae,
and Meliaceae, and all are usually placed into the same order,
although older systems separate that order into Rutales and
Sapindales. The families Flindersiaceae and Ptaeroxylaceae are
sometimes kept separate, but nowadays generally are placed in
Range of subfamily Cneoroideae
the Rutaceae, as are the former Cneoraceae.
Subfamilies
In 1896, Engler published a division of the family Rutaceae into seven subfamilies.[6] One,
Rhabdodendroideae, is no longer considered to belong to the Rutaceae, being treated as the segregate
family Rhabdodendraceae, containing only the genus Rhabdodendron. Two monogeneric subfamilies,
Dictyolomatoideae and Spathelioideae, are now included in the subfamily Cneoroideae, along with genera
Engler placed in other families. The remaining four Engler subfamilies were Aurantioideae, Rutoideae,
Flindersioideae and Toddalioideae. Engler's division into subfamilies largely relied on the characteristics of
the fruit, as did others used until molecular phylogenetic methods were applied.[7]
Molecular methods have shown that only Aurantioideae can be clearly differentiated from other members
of the family based on fruit. They have not supported the circumscriptions of Engler's three other main
subfamilies.[7] In 2012, Groppo et al. divided Rutaceae into only two subfamilies, retaining Cneoroideae
but placing all the remaining genera in a greatly enlarged subfamily Rutoideae s.l.[2] A 2014 classification
by Morton and Telmer also retained Engler's Aurantioideae, but split the remaining Rutoideae s.l. into a
smaller Rutoideae and a much larger Amyridoideae s.l., containing most of Engler's Rutoideae.[8] Until
2021, molecular phylogenetic methods had only sampled between 20% and 40% of the genera of
Rutaceae. A 2021 study by Appelhans et al. sampled almost 90% of the genera. The two main clades
recognized by Groppo et al. in 2012 were upheld, but Morton and Telmer's Rutoideae was paraphyletic
and their Amyridoideae was polyphyletic and did not include the type genus. Applehans et al. divided the
family into six subfamilies, shown below in the cladogram produced in their study. The large subfamily
Zanthoxyloideae was shown to contain distinct clades, but the authors considered that a revised
classification at the tribal level was not yet feasible at the time their paper was published.[7]
Rutaceae
Cneoroideae (8 genera)
Rutoideae s.l.[2]
Rutoideae (5 genera)
Amyridoideae (3 genera)
Haplophylloideae (1 genus, Haplophyllum)
Aurantioideae (about 27 genera)
Zanthoxyloideae (about 110 genera)
Notable species
The family is of great economic importance in warm temperate and
subtropical climates for its numerous edible fruits of the genus Citrus, such
as the orange, lemon, calamansi, lime, kumquat, mandarin and grapefruit.
Non-citrus fruits include the white sapote (Casimiroa edulis), orangeberry
(Glycosmis pentaphylla), limeberry (Triphasia trifolia), and the bael (Aegle
marmelos).
The curry tree, Murraya koenigii, is of culinary importance in the Indian
subcontinent and elsewhere, as its leaves are used as a spice to flavour
dishes. Spices are also made from a number of species in the genus
Zanthoxylum, notably Sichuan pepper. Various Citrus fruits
Other plants are grown in horticulture: Murraya and Skimmia species, for
example. Ruta, Zanthoxylum and Casimiroa species are medicinals. Several plants are also used by the
perfume industry, such as the Western Australian Boronia megastigma.
The genus Pilocarpus has species (P. jaborandi, and P. microphyllus from Brazil, and P. pennatifolius from
Paraguay) from which the medicine pilocarpine, used to treat glaucoma, is extracted.
References
1. "Rutaceae Juss., nom. cons" (https://web.archive.org/web/20090506180339/http://www.ars-
grin.gov/cgi-bin/npgs/html/family.pl?979). Germplasm Resources Information Network.
United States Department of Agriculture. 2003-01-17. Archived from the original (http://www.
ars-grin.gov/cgi-bin/npgs/html/family.pl?979) on 2009-05-06. Retrieved 2009-04-11.
2. Groppo, M.; Kallunki, J.A.; Pirani, J.R. & Antonelli, A. (2012). "Chilean Pitavia more closely
related to Oceania and Old World Rutaceae than to Neotropical groups: Evidence from two
cpDNA non-coding regions, with a new subfamilial classification of the family". PhytoKeys.
19: 9–29. doi:10.3897/phytokeys.19.3912 (https://doi.org/10.3897%2Fphytokeys.19.3912).
PMC 3597001 (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3597001).
3. RUTACEAE (http://www.botanical-dermatology-database.info/BotDermFolder/RUTA.html) in
BoDD – Botanical Dermatology Database
4. "Rutaceae (Citrus family) – 245 images at PlantSystematics.org images, phylogeny,
nomenclature for (Rutaceae)" (http://www.plantsystematics.org/taxpage/0/family/Rutaceae.ht
ml). plantsystematics.org.
5. M. F. Porteners. "Flindersia schottiana, PlantNET - NSW Flora Online, Retrieved September
3rd, 2017" (http://plantnet.rbgsyd.nsw.gov.au/cgi-bin/NSWfl.pl?page=nswfl&lvl=sp&name=Fl
indersia~schottiana).
6. Engler, A. (1896). "Rutaceae". In Engler, A. & Prantl, K. (eds.). Die natürlichen
Pflanzenfamilien. Vol. III(4). Leipzig: Engelmann.
7. Appelhans, Marc S.; Bayly, Michael J.; Heslewood, Margaret M.; Groppo, Milton; Verboom,
G. Anthony; Forster, Paul I.; Kallunki, Jacquelyn A. & Duretto, Marco F. (2021). "A new
subfamily classification of the Citrus family (Rutaceae) based on six nuclear and plastid
markers". Taxon. doi:10.1002/tax.12543 (https://doi.org/10.1002%2Ftax.12543).
8. Morton, Cynthia M. & Telmer, Cheryl (2014). "New Subfamily Classification for the
Rutaceae" (https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Cynthia-Morton/publication/275969900_Ne
w_Subfamily_Classification_for_the_Rutaceae/links/576c51ac08ae193ef3a9a3ac/New-Su
bfamily-Classification-for-the-Rutaceae.pdf) (PDF). Annals of the Missouri Botanical Garden.
99 (4): 620–641. doi:10.3417/2010034 (https://doi.org/10.3417%2F2010034).
Chase, Mark W.; Cynthia M. Morton; Jacquelyn A. Kallunki (August 1999). "Phylogenetic
relationships of Rutaceae: a cladistic analysis of the subfamilies using evidence from RBC
and ATP sequence variation" (http://www.amjbot.org/cgi/content/full/86/8/1191). American
Journal of Botany. Botanical Society of America. 86 (8): 1191–1199. doi:10.2307/2656983 (h
ttps://doi.org/10.2307%2F2656983). JSTOR 2656983 (https://www.jstor.org/stable/2656983).
PMID 10449399 (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10449399). Retrieved 2007-08-30.
Singh, Gurjaran (2004). Plant Systematics: An Integrated Approach. Enfield, New
Hampshire: Science Publishers. pp. 438–440. ISBN 1-57808-342-7.
External links
Media related to Rutaceae at Wikimedia Commons
Data related to Rutaceae at Wikispecies
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