Families
The order Asterales currently includes eleven families, the largest of which are the Asteraceae, with about 25,000 species, and the Campanulaceae ("Bellflowers"), with about 2,000 species. The remaining families count together for less than 500 species. The two large families are cosmopolitan, with many of their species found in the northern hemisphere, and the smaller families are usually confined to Australia and the adjacent areas, or sometimes South America.
Only the Asteraceae have composite flower heads; the other families do not, but share other characteristics such as storage of inulin that define the eleven families as more closely related to each other than to other plant families or orders such as the Rosids.
The name and order Asterales is botanically venerable, dating back to at least 1926 in the Hutchinson system of plant taxonomy when it contained only five families, of which only two are retained in the APG III classification. Under the Cronquist system of taxonomic classification of flowering plants Asteraceae was the only family in the group, but newer systems (such as APG II and APG III) have expanded it to eleven.
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Famous quotes containing the word families:
“The brotherhood of men does not imply their equality. Families have their fools and their men of genius, their black sheep and their saints, their worldly successes and their worldly failures. A man should treat his brothers lovingly and with justice, according to the deserts of each. But the deserts of every brother are not the same.”
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)
“Accidents will occur in the best-regulated families; and in families not regulated by that pervading influence which sanctifies while it enhances ... in short, by the influence of Woman, in the lofty character of Wife, they may be expected with confidence, and must be borne with philosophy.”
—Charles Dickens (1812–1870)
“We now recognize that abuse and neglect may be as frequent in nuclear families as love, protection, and commitment are in nonnuclear families.”
—David Elkind (20th century)