- Apostasioideae
Taxobox
name = Apostasioid orchids
image_caption = "Apostasia wallichii"
regnum =Plant ae
divisio = Magnoliophyta
classis = Liliopsida
ordo =Asparagales
familia =Orchidaceae
subfamilia = Apostasioideae
subdivision_ranks = Genera
subdivision = "Apostasia"
"Neuwiedia "The subfamily Apostasioideae belongs to the orchid family (
Orchidaceae ).It is a clade, but there is bootstrap support that it is a sister to the other orchid subfamilies. A bootstrap is a method for evaluating the statistical importance of positions of different branches in a phylogenetic tree (= a treelike structure giving the evolutionary development of organisms).
The apostasioid orchids are the most primitive orchids, with only two genera. "
Neuwiedia " has 3 fertile, abaxial (= facing away from the stem)anther s, while "Apostasia " has two fertile abaxial anthers and a filamentousstaminode (= a sterilestamen ).These primitive features make them, according to some authorities, not true orchids but rather ancestors of modern orchids. However, modern studies (Stern, Cheadle and Thorsch, 1993) point out that the apostasioid orchids are uniquely defined ( = autapomorphous). This makes them unsuitable as models to be the ancestors of the orchids.
References
*
* [http://www.springerlink.com/content/r793mt806cv17xn2/fulltext.pdf online pdf.format]
*Pridgeon, A.M.; Cribb, P.J.; Chase, M.W. & F. N. Rasmussen (1999): Genera Orchidacearum Vol.1, Oxford U. Press. ISBN 0-19-850513-2
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