Austrobaileyales

Austrobaileyales is an order of flowering plants comprising roughly 100 species of trees, shrubs, and climbing woody vines, formally recognized only with the APG II classification system in 2003 despite having been proposed earlier. It contains three families: the monotypic Austrobaileyaceae, represented by the single Australian liana species Austrobaileya scandens; Schisandraceae, essential-oil-bearing trees, shrubs, and lianas found across tropical and temperate East and Southeast Asia and the Caribbean, whose best-known member is star anise, Illicium verum; and Trimeniaceae, another essential-oil-bearing woody family found across subtropical and tropical Southeast Asia, eastern Australia, and the Pacific islands. The order belongs to the so-called ANA grade of basal angiosperms, lineages that diverged earliest from the rest of the flowering plants, and is considered the sister group to all remaining angiosperms outside that grade, giving it particular importance for understanding early flowering-plant evolution; its fossil record extends back to the Albian, roughly 125 million years ago.