A robust phylogeny of 40 genera and all seven families of the Liliales based on rbcL sequences was dated by the mean branch-length method of Bremer and Gustafsson and by Sanderson's nonparametric rate smoothing. The basal node was set to 82 million years (my) from the results of a previous more extensive dating involving all monocots. Confidence intervals for the age estimates were generated by bootstrap analysis. The results indicate that four well-supported clades of Liliales date back to the Cretaceous ∼65 million years ago (mya), Campynemataceae, Melanthiaceae, Smilacaceae + Liliaceae, and Alstroemeriaceae + Luzuriagaceae + Colchicaceae. Aspects of historical biogeography were investigated by dispersal-vicariance analysis. Several dispersal and vicariance events were found to coincide with Late Cretaceous-Early Tertiary changes in continental interconnections. The study contains the first published sequence of Campynemanthe, supporting the Campynemataceae as a monophyletic group.
Three plastid regions-the rps16 intron, the atpB-rbcL intergenic spacer, and the trnL-F region-in 73 taxa representing all the genera of Colchicaceae except Kuntheria were sequenced to investigate the intrafamilial relationships of the family. In total, the three gene regions, comprising 3830 characters, were analyzed both separately and in a combined matrix. The results did not support the division of the family into two subfamilies, but they did support a core clade of mainly African genera and a grade of Australian, North American, and Asian taxa. One of the four tribes, Iphigenieae, was grossly paraphyletic, and, unexpectedly, Colchicum was nested within Androcymbium. Further, taxa of Gloriosa and Littonia were intermixed.
A recent molecular analysis of the Colchicaceae has revealed that the genus Androcymbium is paraphyletic in relation to Colchicum and that the genus Merendera is polyphyletic. The implications of these results on the monophyly of the genera in this alliance are discussed. Two independent lineages within the paraphyletic Androcymbium are characterised by enlarged and brightly or contrastingly coloured bracts, which conceal the flowers. The tepals in these species are always cucullate. In the remaining lineages the flowers are more prominent and the tepals are mostly flat. No morphological characters can be identified that serve to diagnose the lineages in Androcymbium that are retrieved by the molecular analysis, and the only practical option is to include all species of Androcymbium within an expanded circumscription of Colchicum. The genus Colchicum in this expanded sense is defined by its short‐stemmed or acaulescent habit, androecial nectaries, and 2–4porate pollen. The necessary synonomy and new combinations are made.
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