Icacinaceae

The Icacinaceae are a family of flowering plants,consisting of trees, shrubs, and lianas, primarily of the tropics. The family was traditionally circumscribed quite broadly, with around 55 genera totalling over 400 species. In 2001, though, this circumscription was found to be polyphyletic, and the family was split into four families in three different orders: Icacinaceae sensu stricto (then unplaced at order rank), Pennantiaceae (Apiales), Stemonuraceae (Aquifoliales) and Cardiopteridaceae (also Aquifoliales). Other genera have later been moved to Metteniusaceae (Metteniusales), so that Icacinaceae now include c. 23 genera and 160 species. One genus, Sleumeria, was described as late as 2005.Icacina senegalensis extracts have shown activity against malaria parasites.Icacinaceae belongs to the order Icacinales along with Oncothecaceae. List according to Stull et al. (2015): In 1841, George Bentham described Apodytes and Pogopetalum as new genera and united them with Icacina, Gomphandra, and Leretia to create the tribe Icacineae of what would later be called the family Olacaceae. Olacaceae was at that time, and through the 20th century, defined broadly, encompassing several families in the order Santalales. Pogopetalum was later synonymized with Emmotum. In 1852, John Miers argued that Bentham's Icacineae did not belong in Olacaceae and he raised them to the taxonomic rank of family as Icacinaceae. Philippe van Tieghem realized that the family Icacinaceae, as circumscribed by Miers, consisted of groups that were only distantly related, and in 1897, he divided it into seven families. Van Tieghem's treatment in some ways anticipated the results of 21st century phylogenetic studies, in particular, by his establishment of the families Emmotaceae and Leptaulaceae. His division of Icacinaceae into smaller families was not accepted and other authors continued to define Icacinaceae in the broad sense, known as Icacinaceae sensu lato. In 1942, Hermann Sleumer defined Icacinaceae broadly in his coverage of the family for Die Natürlichen Pflanzenfamilien. Later authors did likewise. In the 1940s, Richard A. Howard wrote a series of papers on several of the genera. Sleumer wrote about the Asian genera in 1969, and the Malesian genera in 1971. Much of what is known about the family comes from regional floras such as Flora of Australia and Flora of China.