Circaeasteraceae is a family

Family (biology)

In biological classification, family is* a taxonomic rank. Other well-known ranks are life, domain, kingdom, phylum, class, order, genus, and species, with family fitting between order and genus. As for the other well-known ranks, there is the option of an immediately lower rank, indicated by the...

 of one to two species of herbaceous plant

Herbaceous plant

A herbaceous plant is a plant that has leaves and stems that die down at the end of the growing season to the soil level. They have no persistent woody stem above ground...

s native to China and the Himalayas.

The family has been recognized by many taxonomists. The APG II system

APG II system

The APG II system of plant classification is the second, now obsolete, version of a modern, mostly molecular-based, system of plant taxonomy that was published in April 2003 by the Angiosperm Phylogeny Group. It was a revision of the first APG system, published in 1998, and was superseded in 2009...

 (2003; unchanged from the APG system

APG system

The APG system of plant classification is the first, now obsolete, version of a modern, mostly molecular-based, system of plant taxonomy that was published in 1998 by the Angiosperm Phylogeny Group. It was superseded in 2003 by a revision, the APG II system, and then in 2009 by a further...

 of 1998), recognizes it and places it in the order Ranunculales

Ranunculales

Ranunculales is an order of flowering plants. Of necessity it contains the family Ranunculaceae, the buttercup family, because the name of the order is based on the name of a genus in that family. Ranunculales belongs to a paraphyletic group known as the basal eudicots...

 in the clade eudicots

Eudicots

Eudicots and Eudicotyledons are botanical terms introduced by Doyle & Hotton to refer to a monophyletic group of flowering plants that had been called tricolpates or non-Magnoliid dicots by previous authors...

. It treats the family to consist of two species, Circaeaster agrestis

Circaeaster agrestis

Circaeaster agrestis is a flowering plant species and one of only one to two species in its family, the Circaeasteraceae. The plant is a small, glabrous herb found in temperate zones from the northwest Himalaya to northwest China.-References:*...

and Kingdonia uniflora, but allows the option of segregating the latter species as family Kingdoniaceae

Kingdoniaceae

Kingdonia uniflora is a species of perennial herbs native to China. The plants have one leaf and a short flower stalk with a small flower.It grows at high elevations in West and North China.- Classification :...

.

External links

• Circaeasteraceae, Kingdoniaceae, in L. Watson and M.J. Dallwitz (1992 onwards). The families of flowering plants.
• NCBI Taxonomy Browser for Circaeasteraceae sensu stricto; for Kingdoniaceae
• links and more links at CSDL, Texas