page_title: Dioscoreales
section_title: Pre-Darwinian
hierarchical_section_title: Dioscoreales / Taxonomy / Pre-Darwinian
caption_attribution_description: English: Dioscorea batatas (D polystachya) - male
context_page_description: The Dioscoreales are an order of monocotyledonous flowering plants in modern classification systems, such as the Angiosperm Phylogeny Group and the Angiosperm Phylogeny Web. Within the monocots Dioscoreales are grouped in the lilioid monocots where they are in a sister group relationship with the Pandanales. Of necessity the Dioscoreales contain the family Dioscoreaceae which includes the yam that is used as an important food source in many regions around the globe. Older systems tended to place all lilioid monocots with reticulate veined leaves in Dioscoreales. As currently circumscribed by phylogenetic analysis using combined morphology and molecular methods, Dioscreales contains many reticulate veined vines in Dioscoraceae, it also includes the myco-heterotrophic Burmanniaceae and the autotrophic Nartheciaceae. The order consists of three families, 22 genera and about 850 species.
context_section_description: For the early history from Lindley (1853) onwards, see Caddick et al. (2000) Table 1, Caddick et al. (2002a) Table 1 and Table 2 in Bouman (1995). The taxonomic classification of Dioscoreales has been complicated by the presence of a number of morphological features reminiscent of the dicotyledons, leading some authors to place the order as intermediate between the monocotyledons and the dicotyledons.
  While Lindley did not use the term "Dioscoreales", he placed the family Dioscoraceae together with four other families in what he referred to as an Alliance (the equivalent of the modern Order) called Dictyogens. He reflected the uncertainty as to the place of this Alliance by placing it as a class of its own between Endogens (monocots) and Exogens (dicots) The botanical authority is given to von Martius (1835) by APG for his description of the family Dioscoreae or Ordo, while other sources cite Hooker (Dioscoreales Hook.f.) for his use of the term "Dioscorales" in 1873 with a single family, Dioscoreae. However, in his more definitive work, the Genera plantara (1883), he simply placed Dioscoraceae in the Epigynae "Series".
caption: Male Dioscorea batatas (D. polystachya) in Hooker's A General System of Botany 1873
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