Wikipedia
The Malpighiales comprise one of the largest orders of flowering plants, containing about species, about 7.8% of the eudicots. The order is very diverse, containing plants as different as the willow, violet, Poinsettia, and coca plant, and are hard to recognize except with molecular phylogenetic evidence. It is not part of any of the classification systems based only on plant morphology. Molecular clock calculations estimate the origin of stem group Malpighiales at around 100 million years ago ( Mya) and the origin of crown group Malpighiales at about 90 Mya.
The Malpighiales are divided into 32 to 42 families, depending upon which clades in the order are given the taxonomic rank of family. In the APG III system, 35 families are recognized. Medusagynaceae, Quiinaceae, Peraceae, Malesherbiaceae, Turneraceae, Samydaceae, and Scyphostegiaceae are consolidated into other families. The largest family, by far, is the Euphorbiaceae, with about 6300 species in about 245 genera.
In a 2009 study of DNA sequences of 13 genes, 42 families were placed into 16 groups, ranging in size from one to 10 families. Almost nothing is known about the relationships among these 16 groups. Malpighiales and Lamiales are the two large orders whose phylogeny remains mostly unresolved.