The Monimiaceae is a family of flowering plants in the magnoliid order Laurales.Peter F. Stevens (2001 onwards). "Monimiaceae" At: Angiosperm Phylogeny Website. At: Botanical Databases At: Missouri Botanical Garden Website. (see External links below) It is closely related to the families Hernandiaceae and Lauraceae.Susanne S. Renner and Andre S. Chanderbali. 2000. "What is the relationship among Hernandiaceae, Lauraceae and Monimiaceae, and why is this question so difficult to answer?" International Journal of Plant Sciences 161(6 supplement):S109-119. It consists of shrubs, small trees, and a few lianas of the tropics and subtropics, mostly in the southern hemisphere.Vernon H. Heywood, Richard K. Brummitt, Ole Seberg, and Alastair Culham. Flowering Plant Families of the World. Firefly Books: Ontario, Canada. (2007). . The largest center of diversity is New Guinea, with about 75 species. Lesser centres of diversity are Madagascar, Australia, and the neotropics. Africa has one species, Xymalos monospora, as does Southern Chile (Peumus boldus). Several species are distributed through Malesia and the southwest Pacific.Susanne S. Renner, Joeri S. Strijk, Dominique Strasberg, and Christophe Thébaud. 2010. "Biogeography of the Monimiaceae (Laurales): a role for East Gondwana and long-distance dispersal, but not West Gondwana". Journal of Biogeography 37(7):1227-1238.
The Monimiaceae are underrepresented in herbaria and other plant collections. Variation within the family has not been understood, resulting in an unusual proportion of monospecific genera. As of 2010, these 11 genera were considered monospecific: Peumus, Xymalos, Kibaropsis, Austromatthaea, Hemmantia, Pendressia, Hennecartia, Macrotorus, Macropeplus, Grazielanthus, and Faika. Kairoa was thought to be monospecific until 2009.Susanne S. Renner and Wayne N. Takeuchi. 2009. "A phylogeny and revised circumscription for Kairoa (Monimiaceae), with the description of a new species from Papua New Guinea". Harvard Papers in Botany 14(1):71-81.
The Monimiaceae include 24 genera with a total of about 217 known species. The largest genera and the number of their constituent species is: Tambourissa (50), Mollinedia (20-90), Kibara (43), Steganthera (17), Palmeria (14), and Hedycarya (11). The type genus, Monimia, is endemic to the Mascarenes.
The number of species in the Monimiaceae has been variously estimated from about 200 to about 270.William R. Philipson. 1993. "Monimiaceae". pages 426-437. In: Klaus Kubitski (editor); Jens G. Rohwer and Volker Bittrich (volume editors). The Families and Genera of Vascular Plants volume II. Springer-Verlag: Berlin;Heidelberg, Germany. Most of this difference results from uncertainty over species limits in the tropical American genus Mollinedia. Estimates of the number of species in Mollinedia have ranged from 20 to 90. Janet Russell Perkins and Ernest Friedrich Gilg described 71 species of Mollinedia in Das Pflanzenreich in 1901,Janet Russell Perkins and Ernest Friedrich Gilg. 1901. "Monimiaceae". pages 1-122. In: Das Pflanzenreich: Regni vegetabilis conspectus. volume IV, family 101. Wilhelm Engelmann. Reprinted by H.R. Engelmann in 1959. (See External links below). but many authors today regard this as an example of overdescription.
The wood of Peumus boldus and Hedycarya arborea is used locally, in Chile and New Zealand, respectively, but is of no commercial importance. Both of these species are grown in their native regions as ornamentals. An herbal tea is made from Peumus.
The phytochemistry of a few of the genera has been studied.Gilda G. Leitão, Naomi K. Simas, Simone S.V. Soares, Ana Paula P. de Brito, Boris M.G. Claros, Thelma B.M. Brito, Franco Delle Monache. 1999. "Chemistry and pharmacology of Monimiaceae: a special focus on Siparuna and Mollinedia". Journal of Ethnopharmacology 65(2):87-102. .
Fossil wood attributed to the Monimiaceae has been found in the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa and on James Ross Island, Antarctica. Both of these fossil sites are roughly 83 million years old, from the Campanian stage of the Cretaceous period. Fossil leaves of the Monimiaceae are known from the Paleocene of King George Island of the South Shetland Islands, near the Antarctic Peninsula and from the Eocene of Patagonia.Cassandra L. Knight and Peter Wilf. 2013. "Rare leaf fossils of Monimiaceae and Atherospermataceae (Laurales) from Eocene Patagonian rainforests and their biogeographic significance". Palaeontologia Electronica 16(3):paper 26A. 39 pages. (See External links below).
Divergence of different groups within Monimiaceae was long believed to be explained by the separation of East Gondwana (India, Sri Lanka, Madagascar, the Seychelles, Australia, Antarctica, and New Caledonia) from West Gondwana (Africa and South America), and by the later separation of Africa and South America.David H. Lorence. 1985. "A monograph of the Monimiaceae (Laurales) in the Malagasy Region (Southwest Indian Ocean)". Annals of the Missouri Botanical Garden 72(1):1-165. The family Monimiaceae was long considered to be one of the best examples of vicariance, but the dating of clades by molecular clock methods has shown that the presence of the Monimiaceae in Africa and South America can be explained only by long-distance dispersal. Antarctica had coastal forests as recently as the mid-Miocene, and these could have provided an intermediate phase in dispersal between Australia and South America.Thomas N. Taylor, Edith L. Taylor, and Michael Krings. 2008. Paleobotany: The Biology and Evolution of Fossil Plants, 2nd edition. Academic Press (an imprint of Elsevier): Burlington, MA; New York, NY; San Diego, CA, USA,, London, UK. 1252 pages. .
Genera The information on genera is from Renner et al. (2010) or, when not available there, from Philipson (1993).
Subfamily Monimioideae Genus Monimia Thouars, 1804 – 3 species; Mauritius and Réunion. Genus Palmeria F.Muell., 1864 – 17 species; New Guinea to Sulawesi and eastern Australia. Genus Peumus Molina, 1782 – 1 species; southern Chile. Subfamily Hortonioideae Genus Hortonia Wight ex Arn., 1838 – 3 species; Sri Lanka. Subfamily Mollinedioideae Tribe Hedycaryeae Genus Decarydendron Danguy, 1928 – 4 species; Madagascar. Genus Ephippiandra Decaisne, 1858 – 7 species; Madagascar. Genus Hedycarya J.R.Forst. & G.Forst., 1776 – 16 species; mostly of New Caledonia, also New Zealand, and Australia to Fiji. Genus †Hedycaryoxylon – 1 species Genus Kibaropsis Vieill. ex Jérémie, 1977 – 1 species; New Caledonia. Genus Levieria Becc., 1877 – 7 species; Queensland, New Guinea to Sulawesi. Genus Tambourissa Sonn., 1782 – approximately 50 species; Madagascar and the Mascarene Islands. Tribe Mollinedieae Genus Austromatthaea L.S.Smith, 1969 – 1 species; Queensland. Genus Grazielanthus Peixoto & Per.-Moura, 2008 – 1 species; southeast Brazil. Genus Hemmantia Whiffin, 2007 – 1 species; Queensland. Genus Hennecartia Poiss., 1885 – 1 species; Paraguay, southern Brazil, northeast Argentina. Genus Kairoa Philipson, 1980 – 4 species; New Guinea. Genus Kibara Endl., 1837 – 47 species; mostly New Guinea, but extending from the Nicobar Islands and Thailand to the Philippines and Queensland. Genus Lauterbachia Perkins, 1900 – 1 species; Papua New Guinea. Genus Macropeplus Perkins, 1898 – 4 species; Brazil. Genus Macrotorus Perkins, 1898 – 2 species; Brazil. Genus Matthaea Blume, 1856 – 6 species; Philippines, Talaud Islands, Malaysia, and Sumatra. Genus Mollinedia Ruiz & Pav., 1794 – 62 species; Central and South America Genus Parakibara Philipson, 1985 – 1 species; Halmahera. Genus Pendressia Whiffin, 2018 – 1 species; Queensland. Genus Steganthera Perkins, 1898 – 28 species; Sulawesi to Solomon Islands and Queensland. Genus Wilkiea F.Muell., 1858 – 12 species; New South Wales, Queensland, New Guinea. Genus Xymalos Baill., 1887 – 1 species; Africa
History The family Monimiaceae was erected in 1809 by Antoine Laurent de Jussieu.Monimiaceae in International Plant Names Index. (see External links below). He called it "[the] order Monimieae",James L. Reveal. 2008 onward. "A Checklist of Family and Suprafamilial Names for Extant Vascular Plants." At: Home page of James L. Reveal and C. Rose Broome. (see External links below). but the orders of that time were equivalent to what are now called families. He defined the family broadly, to include what are now called the Siparunaceae and Atherospermataceae, as well as the modern Monimiaceae. This circumscription of the family prevailed until the 1990s, but some, such as Robert Brown and John Lindley, recognized the Atherospermataceae as a separate family.
Jussieu used the now-obsolete genus names Ruizia, Ambora, Citrosma, and Pavonia (sensu Ruiz & Pavón).page 133 In: Antoine Laurent de Jussieu. 1809. "Mémoire: Sur les Monimées, nouvel ordre de plantes". Annales du Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle 14:116-135. (See External links below). These are now known as Peumus, Tambourissa, Siparuna, and Laurelia, respectively. Jussieu was apparently unaware that Antonio José Cavanilles had published the name Pavonia in 1786 for a genus in the Malvaceae. Later authors replaced the name Ruizia with Boldea, until it was eventually determined that Peumus is the correct name for this genus.
In 1855, Louis-René Tulasne wrote two landmark papers on the Monimiaceae.Louis-René Tulasne. 1855. "Diagnoses nonnullas e Monimiacearum recensione tentata excerptas præmittit". Annales des sciences naturelles [...] Quatrième série. Botanique. Tome III. pages 29-144. (see External links below).Louis-René Tulasne (Ludovicus-Renatus Tulasne). 1855. "Monographia Monimiacearum, primum tentata". Archives du Muséum d'Histoire Naturelle, Paris. 8:273-436. (see External links below). Using current names, the genera that he recognized were: Peumus, Monimia, Tambourissa, Hedycarya, Mollinedia, Kibara, Siparuna, Atherosperma, Laurelia, and Doryphora.
In 1898, Janet Russell Perkins began a series of articles on the Monimiaceae, but only two were ever completed. The second of these was mistitled as part III on its first page (compare to table of contents therein)Janet R. Perkins. 1901. "Beiträge zur Kenntnis der Monimiaceae. II. Monographie der Gattung Siparuna". Botanische Jahrbücher für Systematik, Pflanzengeschichte und Pflanzengeographie 28(5):660-705. (see External links below). and covers the genus Siparuna, which is now grouped with Glossocalyx in the family Siparunaceae.
The first in this series covers the tribe Mollinedieae, but begins with an extensive discussion of the family.Janet R. Perkins. 1898. "Beiträge zur Kenntnis der Monimiaceae. I. Über die Gliederung der Gattungen der Mollinedieae". Botanische Jahrbücher für Systematik, Pflanzengeschichte und Pflanzengeographie 25(4):547-577. (see External links below). Perkins defined the family very broadly, to include Amborella, Trimenia, and Piptocalyx. These are now regarded as basal angiosperms, and Piptocalyx is a segregate of Trimenia. Perkins also included the genus Conuleum, but it is now usually treated in Siparuna because it is monospecific and sister to Siparuna.Susanne S. Renner and Gerlinde Hausner. 2005. "Siparunaceae". Flora Neotropica Monograph 95. New York Botanical Garden Press. .
In this paper, Perkins named five new genera: Macropeplus, Macrotorus, Steganthera, Tetrasynandra, and Anthobembix. The genus Anthobembix consisted of two species that Perkins had transferred from Kibara. In 1942, these were transferred to Steganthera.Ryōzō Kanehira (金平亮三) and Sumihiko Hatsushima (初島住彦). 1942. The Botanical Magazine (Tōkyō) 56:~256-~261. The genus Lauterbachia was named by Perkins in a flora published in 1901.Karl Moritz Schumann and Carl A.G. Lauterbach. 1901. Flora der Deutschen Schutzgebiete in der Südsee (Flora of the German Protectorates in the South Seas):330. (see External links below).