Theaceae

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Theaceae

The Theaceae is a family

Family

Family denotes a group of people affiliated by a common ancestry, affinity or co-residence. Although the concept of consanguinity originally referred to relations by "blood," some cultural anthropology have argued that one must understand the idea of "blood" metaphorically, and that many societies understand 'family' through other concepts r...
of flowering plant

Flowering plant

The flowering plants or angiosperms are the most widespread group of Embryophytes. The flowering plants and the gymnosperms are the only extant groups of Spermatophyte....
s, composed of shrubs and trees. The Theaceae is part of order Ericales

Ericales

The Ericales are a large and diverse order of dicotyledons, including for example tea, persimmon, blueberry, Brazil nut, and azalea. The order includes trees and shrubes, lianas and herbaceous plants....
, in the branch of the dicots known as the Asterids. Some botanists include the family Ternstroemiaceae within the Theaceae while others do not. Theaceae can be described as having anywhere from 7-40 genera, depending on the source and the method of circumscription used.

Family Characteristics
Plants in this family are characterized by simple leaves that are alternate spiral to distichial, serrated, and usually glossy.

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Encyclopedia

The Theaceae is a family

Family

Flowering plant

Ericales

Family Characteristics

Plants in this family are characterized by simple leaves that are alternate spiral to distichial, serrated, and usually glossy. Most of the genera have evergreen

Evergreen

In botany, an evergreen plant is a plant having leaf all year round. This contrasts with deciduous plants, which completely lose their foliage for part of the year....
foliage, but Stewartia and Franklinia are deciduous

Deciduous

Deciduous means falling off at maturity or tending to fall off and is typically used in reference to trees or shrubs that lose their leaves seasonally and to the shedding of other plant structures such as petals after flowering or fruit when ripe....
. The toothed margins are generally associated with a characteristic Theoid leaf tooth, which is crowned by a glandular, deciduous tip. The flowers in this family are usually pink or white and large and showy, often with a strong scent. The calyx consists of five or more sepals, which are often persistent in the fruiting stage, and the corolla is five-merous, rarely numerous. Plants in Theaceae are multistaminate, usually with 20-100+ stamen either free or adnate to the base of the corolla, and are also distinctive because of the presence of pseudopollen. The pseudopollen is produced from connective cells, and has either rib-like or circular thickenings. The ovary is often hairy and narrows gradually into the style, which may be branched or cleft. The carpels are typically opposite from the petals, or the sepals in the case of Camellia. The fruits are loculicidal capsules, indehiscent baccate fruits or sometimes pomes. The seeds are few and sometimes winged, or in some generas covered by fleshy tissue or unwinged and nude. ^3,4

Chemistry

There is distinctive chemistry within the Theaceae family. Sometimes, single crystals of calcium oxalate are present in Theaceous plants. Ellagic acid and common polyphenols including flavonols, flavones and proanthocyanins are widely distributed throughout the family. Gallic acid and catechins only occur in Camellia sect. Thea (C. sinensis, C. taliensis and C. irrawadiensis. Caffeine and its precursors theobromine and theophylline are only found in sect. Thea and are not found in other species of Camellia or other Theaceae. Caffeine content in the tea bush makes up 2.5-4% of the leave's dry weight, and this high content of catechins and caffeine in the tea bush is the result of selection by man for these characters. Triterpenes and their glycosides (saponins) are found widely throughout the family in the seeds, leaves, wood and bark. Plants in this family are also known to accumulate aluminum and fluoride.³

Distribution

Eleven genera are found only in east Asia

East Asia

East Asia is a subregion of Asia that can be defined in either Geography or cultural terms. Geography and geopolitically, it covers about 12,000,000 km?, or about 28 percent of the Asian continent, about 15 percent bigger than the area of Europe, though some categorize Tibet, Xinjiang, and Mongolia as Central Asia....
(Malesia

Malesia

Malesia is a biogeography region straddling the boundary of the Indomalaya and Australasia ecozones. Malesia was first identified as a floristic province that included the Malay Peninsula, Indonesia, the Philippines and New Guinea, based on a shared tropical flora derived mostly from Asia but also with numerous elements of the Antarctic flo...
north to Japan

Japan

Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, People's Republic of China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south....
), with several genera in Central

Central America

Central America is a central geography region of the Americas. It is the southernmost, isthmus portion of the North American continent, which connects with South America on the southeast....
and South America

South America

South America is the southern continent of the Americas, situated entirely in the Western Hemisphere and mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere....
. Three genera are found only in Africa

Africa

Africa is the world's second-largest and second most-populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km? including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area....
, and two genera are only found in the Neotropics.⁴ Three genera (Franklinia
Franklinia

Franklinia is a Monotype genus in the Camellia sinensis family, Theaceae. The sole species in this genus is a flowering tree, Franklinia alatamaha, commonly called the Franklin tree, and native to the Altamaha River valley in Georgia in the southeastern United States....
, Gordonia
Gordonia

Gordonia is a genus of flowering plants in the family Theaceae, related to Franklinia, Camellia and Stewartia. Of the roughly 40 species, all but two are native to southeast Asia in southern China, Taiwan and Indochina....
and Stewartia) also have species native to the southeastern United States

Southeastern United States

The US Southeast is the eastern portion of the Southern United States, but the Census Bureau does not provide a standard definition of a "Southeast" region of the United States, and organizations that need to subdivide the US are free to define a "Southeast" region to fit their needs....
, with Franklinia being endemic there, and under recent interpretations, also Gordonia with the Asian species formerly included in that genus being transferred to Polyspora. There are five genera with very restricted distributions. These include Apterosperma and Euryodendron found in Southern China

China

China is a Culture of China, an ancient civilization, and, depending on perspective, a national or multinational entity extending over a large area in East Asia....
, Archboldiodendron found in New Guinea

New Guinea

New Guinea, located just north of Australia, is the List of islands by area, having become separated from the Australian mainland when the area now known as the Torres Strait flooded after the last glacial period....
, Dankia found in Vietnam

Vietnam

Vietnam , officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam , is the easternmost country on the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia. It is bordered by People's Republic of China to the north, Laos to the northwest, Cambodia to the southwest, and the South China Sea to the east....
, and Visnea in the Canary Islands

Canary Islands

The Canary Islands are a Spain archipelago which, in turn, forms one of the Spanish Autonomous Communities and an Outermost Region of the European Union....
. ⁴

Economic Importance

The best known genus

Genus

A genus is a low-level taxonomic rank used in the classification of living and fossil organisms. The taxonomic ranks are domain , kingdom , phylum, class , order , family , genus, and species....
is Camellia
Camellia

Camellia, the camellias, is a genus of flowering plants in the family Theaceae. They are native to eastern and southern Asia, from the Himalaya east to Japan and Indonesia....
, which includes the plant whose leaves are used to produce tea

Tea

Tea refers to the agricultural products of the leaves, leaf buds, and internodes of the Camellia sinensis plant, prepared and cured by various methods....
(Camellia sinensis). In parts of Asia, other species are used as a beverage, including C. taliensis, C. gradnibractiata, C. kwangsiensis, C. gymnogyna, C. crassicolumna, C. tachangensis, C. ptilophyllaand, and C. irrawadiensis. Several species

Species

In biology, a species is one of the basic units of biological classification and a taxonomic rank. A species is often defined as a group of organisms capable of interbreeding and producing fertile offspring....
grown widely as ornamentals for their flowers and handsome foliage.

Theaceae

Family Characteristics

Chemistry

Distribution

Economic Importance

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