What is "guttiferales"

Guttiferales is a descriptive botanical name. It was used in the Bentham & Hooker system, the Wettstein system for an order of flowering plants that included the family Guttiferae. The latter is also a descriptive botanical name and refers to the latex present in these plants.

The order was fairly small in the Bentham & Hooker system:

• order Guttiferales family Elatinaceae family Hypericaceae family Guttiferae family Ternstroemiaceae family Dipterocarpaceae family Chlenaceae

It was much larger in the Wettstein system:

• order Guttiferales family Dilleniaceae family Actinidiaceae family Ochnaceae family Strassburgeriaceae family Eucryphiaceae family Caryocaraceae family Marcgraviaceae family Quiinaceae family Theaceae family Guttiferae family Dipterocarpaceae

The difference in composition between these two systems, and the fact that these taxa were scattered over various orders in more recent systems such as the Cronquist system and the APG II system suggests it was never a very good unit in the first place. (Note that Bentham & Hooker's Ternstroemiaceae is equivalent to Wettsteins's Theaceae, and that Wettstein's Guttiferae includes Bentham & Hooker's Hypericaceae.)