The Commelinales are an order of monocots, including the spiderwort family, Commelinaceae. Unfortunately the composition of the remainder of the group has been highly variable.
Under Cronquist, the following additional families were recognized:
However, many more modern authors consider these families to have closer affinities to other groups, moving the Xyridaceae to the Eriocaulales and the others to the Bromeliales.
In their place, a series of forms formerly classified in the Liliales have been realized to have closer affinities to the Commelinidae, and so are either grouped in the Commelinales or in a separate, possibly paraphyletic, order Philydrales.
The families, according the update of the APG II (Angiosperm Phylogeny Group), included in the Commelinales are then as follows:
The Commelinales are an order of monocots, including the spiderwort family, Commelinaceae[?].
In their place, a series of forms formerly classified in the Liliales have been realized to have closer affinities to the Commelinidae, and so are either grouped in the Commelinales or in a separate, possibly paraphyletic, order Philydrales.
This variability in membership makes characterization of the Commelinales, beyond being the Commelinaceae and its close relatives, very difficult.
COMMELINALES + ZINGIBERALES: Inflorescences with many-flowered cincinnal [rather zig-zag cyme] branches; tapetum invasive or plasmodial.
Stem-group Commelinales are dated to ca 114 mybp, divergence within the group to ca 110 mybp (Janssen and Bremer 2004); the corresponding dates in Wikström et al.
The fruit is a single-seeded berry, and the seed itself is bowl-shaped as it comes to surround the placenta during development.
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