TABLE OF NATURAL ORDERS 
9 
entirely different interpretation. Gymnosperms are without question, 
placed first as the most primitive of seed plants. DeCandolle, as Bentham 
and Hooker after him, set Ranunculaceae at the very beginning' of the 
plant series because they represented his ideal type. We place Ranun¬ 
culaceae at the beginning of the Dicotyledons because the parts of the 
flower in all circles (or spirals) are free and distinct, and this condition 
is regarded as the most primitive. The group of catkin-bearing families, 
represented by the oaks and their allies, and the apetalous families, such 
as the Polygonaceae and Chenopodiaceae, which Engler and Prantl 
placed near the beginning of the Dicotyledons, we have scattered through 
the choripetalous orders nearest their presumed allies. Compositae is 
placed at the end of the Dicotyledons because there is, in this family, the 
greatest amount of coherence and adnation in the flower. The prepon¬ 
derance of evidence at the present time indicates that Monocotyledons 
are less primitive than Dicotyledons and we place them at the end of the 
sequence, with the families, as appearing in Bentham and Hooker, al¬ 
most reversed, Orchidaceae being placed last, because there is here an 
epigynous flower of considerable complexity. 
Since this small flora involves by no means all the natural families, 
the brief tabulation given below is intended to do no more than arrange 
systematically the families represented in the following pages. It is 
however, an arrangement which indicates in a general way some of the 
tendencies in present day ideas regarding the systematic phylogeny of 
seed plants. 
GYMNOSPERMAE. —Cone-bearing Plants. 
Order Coniferales. 
Pinaceae.—Pine Family. 
Taxodiaceae.—Redwood Family. 
Cupressaceae.—Cypress Family. 
Taxaceae.—Yew Family. 
ANGIOSPERMAE. —Flowering Plants. 
DICOTYLEDONS. 
Leaves netted-veined; parts of the flower mostly in 4s or 5s; vascular 
bundles in a ring around central pith, the stem when perennial increasing 
in diameter by annual layers; embryo with 2 cotyledons. 
A. Choripetalae.—Corolla when present, usually composed of distinct 
petals. 
Order Ranales. 
Ranunculaceae.—Buttercup Family. 
• Calycanthaceae.—Sweet-Shrub Family. 
Berberidaceae.—Barberry Family. 
Lauraceae.—Laurel Family. 
