Taxonomic notes on the Old World species of Winteraceae

Zealand, Tasmania, and eastern Australia.All of the six known genera occur in this region, while only one, Drimys, extends to America, where it is found from Cape Horn to southern Mexico.According to my interpretation, the family now contains about 88 species, of which only four are American.The type genus is Drimys (of which Winter a is a synonym), and the type species of Drimys is D. Wintcri J. R. & G. Forst. of southern South America.This species, therefore, is the nomenclatural basis of the family.Many students have included Drimys and lllicium L. in the same family, subfamily, or tribe.There appear to be no sound morphological, anatomical, or genetic reasons for this broad concept.The wood structure, nodal anatomy, pollen grain, carpellary structure, and many other characters of lllicium remove it from the Winteraceae.Whitaker (8) has pointed out that lllicium cytologically bears no resemblance to either Drimys or members of the Magnoliaceae, being suggestive, in its chromosome number, of Schizandra and Kadsura.Therefore the genus is not considered in connection with the present study; whether it should be placed in the Schizandraceae or in an independent family must be decided by future study.The directors and curators of the following institutions have kindly loaned herbarium material,