Core Eudicots

1. Supertaxonomy Overview

The Core Eudicots are the great central radiation of the eudicots and one of the dominant evolutionary lineages of flowering plants. Also known as Gunneridae in phylogenetic nomenclature, the clade contains more than 70% of living angiosperm species and encompasses an extraordinary share of the plants that shape forests, gardens, farms, grasslands, deserts, wetlands, and human economies. Roses, legumes, oaks, grapes, maples, citrus, cacti, tomatoes, potatoes, mints, coffee, blueberries, hydrangeas, carrots, sunflowers, and thousands of other familiar plants belong here. The Core Eudicots are therefore both a major evolutionary radiation and one of the most useful landmarks for understanding modern flowering-plant classification (One Thousand Plant Transcriptomes Initiative 2019; Chanderbali et al. 2022).

Core Eudicots form a monophyletic clade within the Eudicots. They are not equivalent to Eudicots as a whole. The earlier-diverging living eudicot orders Ranunculales, Proteales, Trochodendrales, and Buxales fall outside the Core Eudicots. In the APG V classification, those four orders precede a Core Eudicot radiation beginning with Gunnerales and Dilleniales, followed by the much larger superrosid and superasterid radiations and the currently non-rosid, non-asterid orders Santalales and Caryophyllales (Angiosperm Phylogeny Group 2026).

The scale of this radiation is remarkable. Core Eudicots range from canopy trees and long-lived shrubs to annual herbs, vines, aquatics, geophytes, epiphytes, succulents, carnivorous plants, hemiparasites, holoparasites, and other highly specialized forms. They occur from tropical rainforest to tundra and from freshwater habitats to some of the world’s driest deserts. No single outward appearance adequately characterizes such a vast clade (Soltis et al. 2018).

This diversity helps explain why the group was clarified primarily through molecular phylogenetics rather than traditional morphology. The broader Eudicots are ancestrally characterized by tricolpate pollen and its derivatives, but no comparably simple morphological synapomorphy identifies every Core Eudicot. Strong molecular evidence nevertheless repeatedly supports the clade. A more conspicuous floral pattern arose slightly later within Pentapetalae, the enormous clade comprising Core Eudicots other than Gunnerales: flowers organized into stable whorls, frequently with five sepals and five petals, became an important developmental foundation for much of subsequent eudicot floral diversity (Smyth 2018; Soltis et al. 2018).

The name Gunneridae was formally proposed for essentially the same crown clade that has traditionally been called the core eudicots. Tree TSAR retains Core Eudicots as its principal public-facing name because the term is descriptive, well established in botanical literature, immediately communicates its relationship to Eudicots, and avoids requiring readers to learn another unfamiliar suprageneric name merely to navigate the classification. Gunneridae remains useful as an alternative phylogenetic name (Cantino et al. 2007).

For Tree TSAR, Core Eudicots is an exemplary tentpole superclade. The supertaxonomy framework is intended to emphasize stable, memorable, evolutionarily meaningful landmarks rather than require an equal number of ranked categories in every lineage. Core Eudicots succeeds particularly well in this role because the clade itself is highly stable even though several ancient relationships immediately within it remain difficult to resolve.

2. Placement in Tree TSAR

Within the Tree TSAR supertaxonomy framework, Core Eudicots occupy the broad pathway:

Seed Plants → Angiosperms → Core Eudicots

The corresponding earlier-diverging eudicot orders are treated separately under Tree TSAR’s explanatory Basal Eudicots grouping. Ranunculales, Proteales, Trochodendrales, and Buxales all branch before Core Eudicots in APG V (Angiosperm Phylogeny Group 2026). “Basal Eudicots” is useful for navigation but represents a paraphyletic grade, whereas Core Eudicots is a genuine clade.

Under the revised APG V-informed Tree TSAR scaffold, the most useful immediate organization is Gunnerales; Dilleniales; Superrosids; Santalales; Caryophyllales; and Superasterids.

This arrangement requires an important departure from the older APG IV-style diagram. Santalales and Caryophyllales should not be placed within Superasterids. Plastid analyses had grouped them there, but nuclear and mitochondrial evidence does not confidently assign either order to Superrosids or Superasterids. APG V therefore identifies them as non-rosid, non-asterid Core Eudicots (Angiosperm Phylogeny Group 2026).

Conversely, Superrosids now include Vitales and Saxifragales as close relatives of the Rosids. APG V notes that plastid, mitochondrial, and nuclear datasets differ over the precise positions of these two orders, but recent nuclear analyses recover Vitales and Saxifragales successively sister to the Rosids, and APG V therefore retains both within Superrosids (Angiosperm Phylogeny Group 2026). This means that Vitaceae belongs to Superrosids in Tree TSAR but should not itself be labeled a member of Rosids.

At the other side of the radiation, APG V’s Superasterids are narrower than the familiar APG IV conception. Berberidopsidales remains sister to the large Asterid clade and therefore anchors Superasterids together with the Asterids. Caryophyllales and Santalales no longer fill that superclade (Angiosperm Phylogeny Group 2026).

This is exactly the sort of situation for which Tree TSAR’s selective supertaxonomy system is useful. A member of Fabaceae can descend through Core Eudicots → Superrosids → Rosids before reaching Fabales and Fabaceae. A cactus can pass directly from Core Eudicots to Caryophyllales and Cactaceae without an invented intervening clade. Tree TSAR should not add placeholders simply to make the hierarchy visually symmetrical; intentionally compressed or empty supertaxonomy levels are appropriate when no stable, useful tentpole exists.

APG V itself provides strong support for this conservative approach. Although it intends the circumscriptions of recognized families and orders to be comparatively stable, its authors specifically caution that the relative arrangement of orders, especially in the Core Eudicots, remains susceptible to change (Angiosperm Phylogeny Group 2026). Tree TSAR can therefore maintain Core Eudicots as a durable supertaxonomy anchor without pretending that every deeper branch beneath it has equivalent certainty.

3. Evolutionary History and Fossil Context

The rise of the Core Eudicots was one of the defining events of the Cretaceous radiation of flowering plants. Eudicots themselves can be recognized in the fossil record by distinctive tricolpate pollen by approximately the latest Barremian to earliest Aptian of the Early Cretaceous. The earliest eudicot fossils, however, overwhelmingly represent lineages that diverged before the great Core Eudicot radiation (Friis et al. 2016; Gravendyck et al. 2025).

Direct fossil evidence establishes that recognizable Core Eudicots were present by approximately 100 million years ago, near the Early-Late Cretaceous boundary. Particularly important is Caliciflora mauldinensis from the earliest Cenomanian of eastern North America. Its flower contains five sepals, five petals, two whorls of stamens, three free carpels, and tricolporate pollen. This combination unequivocally places it among Core Eudicots and suggests possible rosid affinity, although the fossil cannot confidently be assigned to a modern family or order (Friis et al. 2016).

Caliciflora is important not simply because of its age but because it captures a recognizable stage in the development of the highly organized flowers characteristic of the later Core Eudicot radiation. Earlier eudicot floras are dominated by comparatively species-poor early branches, whereas Late Cretaceous floras increasingly contain rosid and asterid lineages. The fossil record therefore documents a profound ecological transition in which Core Eudicots moved from relative obscurity toward dominance of many terrestrial floras (Friis et al. 2016).

Molecular-clock estimates often infer an origin older than the oldest unequivocal Core Eudicot flowers. Estimates vary with calibration and methodology, but major Pentapetalae lineages were probably established during the Early Cretaceous, with several divergences occurring in rapid succession (Magallón et al. 2015; Zeng et al. 2017). Such rapid ancient radiation is one reason relationships among several Core Eudicot orders remain difficult to reconstruct even with large genomic datasets.

Genome evolution was also unusually active near this portion of the angiosperm tree. Evidence from genomic and transcriptomic studies associates the early Core Eudicot/Pentapetalae radiation with ancient whole-genome duplication and the famous gamma palaeohexaploidy. The exact placement and number of early duplications have been interpreted somewhat differently among studies, so genome multiplication should not be presented as a single precisely located event explaining the success of the entire clade. Comparative genomes of Buxales and Trochodendrales now strongly support placement of gamma on the Core Eudicot stem rather than in their common ancestor with the early-diverging eudicots (One Thousand Plant Transcriptomes Initiative 2019; Chanderbali et al. 2022).

The enormous modern diversity of the group probably cannot be attributed to any one innovation. Floral developmental reorganization, ancient polyploidy, rapid lineage splitting, ecological opportunity, coevolution with animals and fungi, changes in climate and terrestrial habitats, and subsequent extinction have all influenced the shape of the surviving tree.

Tree TSAR discusses fossils such as Caliciflora for evolutionary context rather than attempting to place them into the active extant family hierarchy. Their importance lies in showing when recognizable Core Eudicot biology appeared and how the modern radiation emerged through geological time.

4. Classification and Circumscription

Traditional flowering-plant classifications generally divided angiosperms into monocotyledons and dicotyledons. The latter category proved to be phylogenetically artificial. Magnoliids and several early-diverging angiosperm lineages share the familiar two-cotyledon condition but are not part of the clade now called Eudicots. Molecular phylogenetics replaced the old “dicot” concept with a succession of increasingly well-supported evolutionary lineages (Soltis et al. 2018).

Within Eudicots, recognition of the Core Eudicots marked another major advance. The clade is strongly supported molecularly and corresponds to Gunneridae as defined in phylogenetic nomenclature. Gunnerales represents its earliest living branch in the conventional modern framework, while its enormous sister radiation has been named Pentapetalae (Cantino et al. 2007; Soltis et al. 2018).

Pentapetalae remains a useful evolutionary term, particularly when discussing floral evolution, but Tree TSAR does not need to use it as a fixed supertaxonomy tentpole. APG V itself organizes its classification beneath Core Eudicots without relying on Pentapetalae as a principal displayed grouping. Its linear sequence proceeds through Gunnerales and Dilleniales before the great superrosid and superasterid radiations and the intervening uncertain orders (Angiosperm Phylogeny Group 2026). Tree TSAR can therefore explain Pentapetalae without inserting another obligatory navigation level across nearly every Core Eudicot page.

The most important change from APG IV to APG V is not wholesale reclassification but a shift in the evidence used to evaluate deep relationships. Earlier APG systems were necessarily based predominantly on plastid DNA. During the decade after APG IV, transcriptomics, target-capture sequencing, and increasingly complete nuclear genomes generated hundreds of nuclear loci across thousands of angiosperms. APG V therefore places much greater weight on broad, well-supported nuclear results where they conflict with plastid topology (Li et al. 2021; Zuntini et al. 2024; Angiosperm Phylogeny Group 2026).

This matters particularly within Core Eudicots because plastid and nuclear histories do not always agree. The enormous plastid analysis of Li et al. (2021), for example, strongly recovered several deep relationships that differ from those favored by recent nuclear studies. Zuntini et al. (2024) sampled nearly 8,000 angiosperm genera using hundreds of nuclear genes and became a major foundation for APG V’s reassessment.

APG V adopts an important methodological principle in response: well-supported, broadly sampled nuclear results are generally favored when they conflict with plastid topology, but unresolved nuclear conflict is not converted artificially into certainty. Where gene trees or analytical methods disagree substantially, APG V may leave a lineage unplaced or represent the relationship as a polytomy (Angiosperm Phylogeny Group 2026).

The resulting Core Eudicot scaffold differs meaningfully from APG IV. Vitales and Saxifragales are retained within Superrosids, while Santalales and Caryophyllales are removed from Superasterids and left outside both major superclades. Berberidopsidales remains associated with the Asterids in Superasterids (Angiosperm Phylogeny Group 2026).

The Rosids have also been reorganized internally. Fabids are now restricted to the four nitrogen-fixing orders Fabales, Rosales, Fagales, and Cucurbitales. Celastrales, Oxalidales, and Malpighiales, formerly composing the plastid-based COM assemblage, do not form that clade in recent nuclear analyses and are instead associated with the enlarged malvid radiation (Sun et al. 2015; Angiosperm Phylogeny Group 2026).

These disagreements do not make Core Eudicot classification unreliable. They show something more interesting: the clade itself is much more stable than some of its earliest internal branches. Rapid radiation, incomplete lineage sorting, ancient hybridization and introgression, polyploidy, extinction, and methodological sensitivity can produce genuine disagreement among different parts of plant genomes (Zeng et al. 2017; Zuntini et al. 2024).

Tree TSAR consequently accepts Core Eudicots confidently while remaining conservative about uncertain intermediate relationships. This preserves both phylogenetic accuracy and navigational stability.

5. Morphology, Biology, and Identification

There is no single visible character that identifies every Core Eudicot. This is unsurprising for a lineage containing more than 70% of flowering-plant diversity. Core Eudicots inherit the characteristic eudicot lineage of pollen with three principal apertures, although those apertures have been extensively modified or multiplied in numerous descendant lineages (Soltis et al. 2018).

The most famous morphological development near the base of the clade is associated more specifically with Pentapetalae. Its ancestral flower appears to have possessed a strongly organized, whorled architecture commonly expressed as five sepals, five petals, two stamen whorls, and a central gynoecium. The name Pentapetalae refers to this connection with pentamery. Gunnerales diverged before this characteristic floral organization arose, which is why “five-petaled flower” cannot serve as a definition of Core Eudicots as a whole (Smyth 2018; Soltis et al. 2018).

Even within Pentapetalae, the ancestral pattern has been modified almost beyond recognition in many descendants. Asteraceae compress numerous specialized florets into flower heads. Fabaceae often develop strongly bilateral papilionoid or other specialized flowers. Many Asterids fuse their petals into tubes. Wind-pollinated trees may reduce the perianth dramatically. Caryophyllales include highly modified carnivorous and succulent forms, and Santalales include parasites whose vegetative and reproductive structures may be substantially transformed.

The two living families of Gunnerales illustrate the difficulty of identifying deep phylogenetic relationships through outward appearance. Gunneraceae includes species of Gunnera, some famous for enormous leaves and moist habitats, whereas Myrothamnaceae consists of drought-adapted resurrection shrubs. Their close relationship was not an obvious conclusion of traditional morphology.

Vegetative diversity is even greater. Leaves may be simple or compound, entire or dissected, evergreen or deciduous, and arranged alternately, oppositely, or in whorls. Stems range from massive woody trunks to ephemeral herbaceous axes. Leaves and shoots have been transformed into spines, tendrils, traps, succulent storage structures, and organs supporting parasitic or climbing lifestyles.

In practical plant identification, “Core Eudicot” is therefore best understood as an evolutionary identity rather than a field diagnosis. Once a plant has been recognized as a eudicot, identification normally proceeds through combinations of floral structure, pollen, leaf arrangement, ovary position, stamen number, carpel organization, fruit type, anatomy, chemistry, and increasingly molecular evidence to determine its order and family.

6. Distribution and Ecology

Core Eudicots occur essentially worldwide wherever flowering plants grow. They are present from tropical lowlands to alpine environments and from humid forests to some of the driest terrestrial habitats. Their members occupy freshwater systems, wetlands, temperate and boreal forests, grasslands, savannas, Mediterranean shrublands, deserts, cliffs, coastal environments, disturbed ground, and cultivated landscapes (Soltis et al. 2018).

The clade contributes many of the dominant broadleaved trees of both tropical and temperate forests. Rosid lineages include oaks, beeches, birches, walnuts, legumes, willows, eucalypts, dipterocarps, elms, mulberries, and many other major forest components.

Core Eudicots have repeatedly evolved unusual ecological strategies. Fabaceae and their relatives include the best-known radiation of plants participating in root-nodule nitrogen-fixing symbioses. Santalales include many hemiparasites and parasites. Caryophyllales contain some of the world’s most spectacular succulent radiations, extreme halophytes, and multiple carnivorous lineages, including sundews, Venus flytraps, and pitcher plants. Other lineages have independently evolved epiphytism, aquatic habits, mycoheterotrophy, or complete loss of photosynthesis.

Interactions with animals are correspondingly varied. Pollination involves insects, birds, bats, wind, and a wide range of highly specialized systems. Seed and fruit dispersal may depend upon wind, water, explosive mechanisms, attachment to animals, or ingestion by vertebrates. The development of fleshy fruits, nuts, capsules, drupes, samaras, burs, and countless other dispersal structures has repeatedly transformed ecological interactions within the clade.

The ecological history of Core Eudicots is consequently inseparable from the history of modern terrestrial ecosystems. Their Cretaceous expansion coincided with profound changes in the composition and structure of terrestrial vegetation, and today they provide food, shelter, substrates, symbiotic partners, and habitat structure for innumerable other organisms.

7. Human Uses and Cultural Importance

Core Eudicots include an enormous proportion of the plants used directly by people. Major food crops include beans, peas, lentils, soybeans, peanuts, grapes, apples, pears, peaches, cherries, strawberries, raspberries, citrus, tomatoes, potatoes, carrots, celery, lettuce, cabbages, broccoli, mustards, cucumbers, melons, pumpkins, squashes, sunflowers, blueberries, olives, and numerous nuts.

Several globally important beverages and stimulants also originate here. Coffee belongs to Rubiaceae, tea to Theaceae, cacao to Malvaceae, and many culinary herbs to Lamiaceae and Apiaceae. Sunflower, soybean, peanut, olive, canola and other Core Eudicots produce important edible and industrial oils.

Woody Core Eudicots supply timber, veneers, fuelwood, pulp, specialty woods, resins and other products. Oaks, maples, walnuts, eucalypts, teak, mahoganies and many other commercially important trees belong to the clade. Cotton supplies one of the world’s most important natural fibers, while Hevea brasiliensis supplies the principal source of natural rubber.

The horticultural importance of Core Eudicots is equally difficult to overstate. Roses, peonies, hydrangeas, rhododendrons, azaleas, camellias, geraniums, begonias, impatiens, petunias, salvias, asters, chrysanthemums, coneflowers, viburnums, dogwoods, maples, cacti, and countless succulents are all members. Many of the plants central to native-plant horticulture, ecological restoration, urban forestry, and traditional medicinal systems also belong here.

Some conspicuous cultivated plants are not Core Eudicots, which makes the clade especially useful for teaching modern plant classification. Wheat, rice, maize, grasses, palms, lilies, orchids, onions, and bananas are monocots. Magnolias, tulip trees, avocado, cinnamon, and black pepper belong to magnoliid lineages. Buttercups, poppies, barberries, lotus, plane-trees, proteas, and boxwood are eudicots but fall outside the Core Eudicots.

Understanding Core Eudicots therefore connects evolutionary systematics directly to food, forestry, gardening, medicine, conservation, agriculture, and everyday human experience.

8. Conservation Significance

The extraordinary evolutionary success of Core Eudicots should not be confused with universal conservation security. The clade includes some of the most abundant crops, weeds, and widespread native plants on Earth alongside narrowly endemic species confined to individual islands, mountains, valleys, soil types, forest fragments, or specialized ecological niches.

Habitat loss and land-use conversion threaten many constituent lineages, particularly plants of tropical forests, wetlands, islands, Mediterranean-climate ecosystems, and other regions with high endemism. Additional pressures include logging, unsustainable harvest, altered fire regimes, invasive species, pathogens, hydrological change, illegal plant collection, pollinator disruption, and climate-driven shifts in habitat suitability.

Climate change presents especially different problems across such a broad lineage. Short-lived annuals with broad dispersal may respond very differently from long-lived trees, isolated montane endemics, desert specialists, or plants dependent upon highly specific pollinators, dispersers, fungi, or host plants. Conservation must therefore operate at family, genus, species and population scales rather than treating Core Eudicots as though they shared a single risk profile.

The clade is also exceptionally important for crop-wild-relative conservation. Wild relatives of legumes, fruits, vegetables, oil crops, fiber crops, beverages, and ornamentals preserve genetic variation that may become increasingly important for resistance to pests and disease, tolerance of drought and heat, and future crop improvement.

Seed banking is effective for many species whose seeds tolerate drying and freezing, while living collections, cryopreservation, tissue culture and managed populations are needed for others. Botanical gardens and arboreta consequently play a substantial role in conserving the phylogenetic and genetic breadth of Core Eudicots, especially threatened woody plants and species with recalcitrant or otherwise difficult-to-store seeds.

9. Major Included Groups

Gunnerales represents the earliest major living branch recognized within the Core Eudicots in the APG V framework. It contains Gunneraceae and Myrothamnaceae, two small and outwardly dissimilar families whose relationship illustrates how strongly molecular phylogenetics reshaped understanding of flowering-plant evolution. APG V lists Gunnerales immediately after the early-diverging Buxales and at the beginning of the Core Eudicots (Angiosperm Phylogeny Group 2026).

Dilleniales follows Gunnerales in the APG V linear classification and contains Dilleniaceae. The order has long been important in attempts to resolve the initial radiation of Pentapetalae because its exact relationship to the large rosid and asterid-associated branches has varied among datasets. Its direct placement under Core Eudicots in Tree TSAR avoids assigning a more specific tentpole where the phylogenetic history does not warrant one.

Superrosids comprise Vitales, Saxifragales, and the enormous Rosid radiation in the APG V arrangement. APG V shifts emphasis from the older plastid topology by recognizing recent nuclear evidence that places Vitales and Saxifragales as close successive relatives of Rosids (Angiosperm Phylogeny Group 2026). The group ultimately contains such familiar families as Vitaceae, Saxifragaceae, Crassulaceae, Hamamelidaceae, Rosaceae, Fabaceae, Fagaceae, Cucurbitaceae, Brassicaceae, Sapindaceae, Malvaceae, Myrtaceae and many others.

Within Rosids, Fabids are now restricted to Fabales, Rosales, Fagales, and Cucurbitales. These four orders form the great nitrogen-fixing lineage, although not every descendant retains nitrogen-fixing symbiosis. The older COM grouping of Celastrales, Oxalidales, and Malpighiales breaks apart in nuclear analyses, and those orders instead lie on the expanded malvid side of the Rosid tree (Sun et al. 2015; Angiosperm Phylogeny Group 2026).

Santalales is a major parasitic-rich Core Eudicot lineage that APG V deliberately leaves outside both Superrosids and Superasterids. The order itself remains well recognized, but family circumscriptions have been challenging because parasitism, reduced morphology and genomic modification complicate phylogenetic inference. APG V revises Olacaceae and Santalaceae and recognizes Erythropalaceae and Strombosiaceae separately while retaining uncertainty in several relationships (Angiosperm Phylogeny Group 2026).

Caryophyllales is another independent Core Eudicot order currently left outside the two great superclades. It contains an extraordinary concentration of ecological and morphological specialization: cacti and other succulents, carnations, amaranths, beets, buckwheats, salt-tolerant plants, sundews, Venus flytraps, and tropical pitcher plants. APG V’s treatment is especially important because older plastid classifications commonly placed Caryophyllales in Superasterids; the new framework does not (Angiosperm Phylogeny Group 2026).

Superasterids, as treated by APG V, begin with Berberidopsidales and continue into the great Asterid radiation. Berberidopsidales remains sister to Asterids and is therefore securely retained within Superasterids even as Santalales and Caryophyllales are removed (Angiosperm Phylogeny Group 2026). Asterids encompass Cornales, Ericales, the Lamiids and the Campanulids and ultimately include such familiar families as Hydrangeaceae, Ericaceae, Theaceae, Rubiaceae, Apocynaceae, Solanaceae, Lamiaceae, Oleaceae, Apiaceae, Caprifoliaceae and Asteraceae.

The details within these huge radiations will continue to evolve as phylogenomic sampling improves. Their placement beneath the larger Core Eudicot tentpole allows Tree TSAR to accommodate those changes without repeatedly reconstructing the entire upper hierarchy.

10. Similar, Overlapping, or Historically Confused Groups

Eudicots and Core Eudicots are not synonymous. Eudicots also contain Ranunculales, Proteales, Trochodendrales, and Buxales, which diverged before the Core Eudicot crown in the APG V classification (Angiosperm Phylogeny Group 2026).

Basal Eudicots is a convenient descriptive term for those early-diverging branches but is not itself a monophyletic clade. Tree TSAR uses the term as an explanatory navigation unit, not as a claim that those orders share a more recent common ancestor with one another than with Core Eudicots.

Gunneridae is an alternative phylogenetic name for the Core Eudicot clade. It was formally proposed in 2007 for the lineage that had already been widely called the core eudicots (Cantino et al. 2007). Tree TSAR favors the more transparent term Core Eudicots for public navigation while recognizing Gunneridae in explanatory text and synonym searches.

Pentapetalae is closely related in meaning but is not identical to Core Eudicots. It denotes the enormous Core Eudicot radiation remaining after the divergence of Gunnerales and is especially meaningful in discussions of floral evolution (Cantino et al. 2007; Smyth 2018). Tree TSAR does not require Pentapetalae as a fixed supertaxonomy column because Core Eudicots provides the more familiar and broadly useful navigational landmark.

Dicots or dicotyledons belong to an older classification tradition and encompass many plants outside the Eudicots. The term remains useful descriptively in horticulture and general botany but should not be interpreted as a modern monophyletic taxon.

Rosids, Asterids, Superrosids, and Superasterids describe major subdivisions within Core Eudicots rather than alternatives to the name. Importantly, APG V modifies the familiar APG IV boundaries of the two superclades. Vitales and Saxifragales are placed in Superrosids, while Caryophyllales and Santalales are left outside both major superclades. Berberidopsidales plus Asterids comprise the securely identified Superasterid side of the current framework (Angiosperm Phylogeny Group 2026).

Older APG IV-derived diagrams and references may therefore show a superficially different Core Eudicot backbone. This is not because the Core Eudicot clade itself has become doubtful. Rather, genomic evidence has changed our interpretation of several very rapid divergences inside the clade.

11. Additional Information

The Angiosperm Phylogeny Group V classification is the principal contemporary reference for the organization of angiosperm orders and families used here. Its 2026 update is especially important because it explicitly integrates the large nuclear phylogenomic datasets that accumulated after APG IV (Angiosperm Phylogeny Group 2026).

The Angiosperm Phylogeny Website, maintained by Peter F. Stevens, remains an especially useful resource for detailed information on relationships, morphology, chemistry, distributions, fossil history, and alternative phylogenetic hypotheses across angiosperm orders and families (Stevens 2001 onwards).

Plants of the World Online, maintained by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, is valuable for accepted names, synonyms, distributions and taxon-level information once readers move from Core Eudicots into particular families, genera and species. World Flora Online provides another global taxonomic reference, while Catalogue of Life is useful for broad name and classification checking.

GBIF and iNaturalist are particularly useful for examining distributions and occurrence data of individual families, genera and species. The Paleobiology Database provides a complementary resource for investigating fossil occurrences and the geological history of constituent lineages.

These resources do not necessarily use every Tree TSAR supertaxonomy tentpole as a formal displayed rank. That difference is intentional. Tree TSAR uses selected major clades as an explanatory scaffold over contemporary phylogenetic evidence, rather than attempting to reproduce the interface or rank structure of any single external database.

12. References and Further Reading

Angiosperm Phylogeny Group (2016) An update of the Angiosperm Phylogeny Group classification for the orders and families of flowering plants: APG IV. Botanical Journal of the Linnean Society 181(1): 1–20. https://doi.org/10.1111/boj.12385 (opens in a new tab)

Angiosperm Phylogeny Group, Byng JW, Chase MW, Christenhusz MJM, Fay MF, Li D-Z, Ma H, Mabberley DJ, Soltis DE, Soltis PS, et al. (2026) Large-scale nuclear and plastid phylogenomic analyses inform an updated Angiosperm Phylogeny Group classification: APG V. Journal of Systematics and Evolution. Online 18 June 2026. https://www.jse.ac.cn/EN/abstract/abstract103821.shtml (opens in a new tab)

Cantino PD, Doyle JA, Graham SW, Judd WS, Olmstead RG, Soltis DE, Soltis PS, Donoghue MJ (2007) Towards a phylogenetic nomenclature of Tracheophyta. Taxon 56(3): 822–846. https://doi.org/10.2307/25065864 (opens in a new tab)

Chanderbali AS, Jin L, Xu Q, Zhang Y, Zhang J, Jian S, Carroll E, Sankoff D, Albert VA, Howarth DG, et al. (2022) Buxus and Tetracentron genomes help resolve eudicot genome history. Nature Communications 13: 643. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-022-28312-w (opens in a new tab)

Friis EM, Pedersen KR, Crane PR (2016) The emergence of core eudicots: New floral evidence from the earliest Late Cretaceous. Proceedings of the Royal Society B 283: 20161325. https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2016.1325 (opens in a new tab)

Gravendyck J, Krencker F-N, Riding JB, et al. (2025) Barremian tricolpate pollen from Portugal: New evidence for the age of eudicot-related angiosperms. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 122(21): e2421470122. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2421470122 (opens in a new tab)

Li H-T, Luo Y, Gan L, Ma P-F, Gao L-M, Yang J-B, Cai J, Gitzendanner MA, Fritsch PW, Zhang T, et al. (2021) Plastid phylogenomic insights into relationships of all flowering plant families. BMC Biology 19: 232. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12915-021-01166-2 (opens in a new tab)

Magallón S, Gómez-Acevedo S, Sánchez-Reyes LL, Hernández-Hernández T (2015) A metacalibrated time-tree documents the early rise of flowering plant phylogenetic diversity. New Phytologist 207(2): 437–453. https://doi.org/10.1111/nph.13264 (opens in a new tab)

Moore MJ, Soltis PS, Bell CD, Burleigh JG, Soltis DE (2010) Phylogenetic analysis of 83 plastid genes further resolves the early diversification of eudicots. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 107(10): 4623–4628. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0907801107 (opens in a new tab)

One Thousand Plant Transcriptomes Initiative (2019) One thousand plant transcriptomes and the phylogenomics of green plants. Nature 574: 679–685. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-019-1693-2 (opens in a new tab)

Smyth DR (2018) Evolution and genetic control of the floral ground plan. New Phytologist 220(1): 70–86. https://doi.org/10.1111/nph.15282 (opens in a new tab)

Soltis DE, Soltis PS, Endress PK, Chase MW, Manchester SR, Judd WS, Majure LC, Mavrodiev EV (2018) Phylogeny and Evolution of the Angiosperms: Revised and Updated Edition. University of Chicago Press, Chicago. https://doi.org/10.7208/chicago/9780226441757.001.0001 (opens in a new tab)

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