Chloranthales

Ecology & form

• Members are aromatic with opposite, evergreen leaves with distinctive serrate margins and interpetiolar stipules 

• The flowers are inconspicuous, and arranged in inflorescences

  • Petals are absent in this family, and sometimes so are sepals. 

  • Fruit is drupe-like, consisting of one carpel.

  • Three-parted stamen found in Chloranthus

• Flowers found from Early Cretaceous (Friis et al. 1996)

• Asteropolis: Pollen found from Late Cretaceous (Doyle 1999)

• Unlike other ancestral angiosperms, some Chloranthaceae possess high photosynthetic capacities and seedlings that recruit in canopy gaps and other sunny, disturbed habitats, which may have allowed Cretaceous Chloranthaceae to expand into more diverse environments (Feild et al. 2004)