Celastraceae Lepidobotryaceae The Celastrales are an order of flowering plants found throughout the tropics and subtropics, with only a few species extending far into the temperate regions.

Perhaps the most conspicuous and unusual trait of the Celastrales is the nectary disk, a feature that it shares with another rosid order, Sapindales.

In 2000, Vincent Savolainen et alii found that three families - Lepidobotryaceae, Parnassiaceae, and Celastraceae - were closely related.

[11] They stated that these three families should constitute the order Celastrales, and this idea was accepted by the Angiosperm Phylogeny Group, which later subsumed the Parnassiaceae into the Celastraceae.

[8] In 2001, in a molecular phylogenetic study of DNA sequences, Mark Simmons and others confirmed all of these results except for the placement of Lophopyxis and the Lepidobotryaceae, which they did not sample.

[12] In 2006, Li-Bing Zhang and Mark Simmons produced a phylogeny of the Celastrales based on nuclear ribosomal, and chloroplast DNA.

[14] Zhang and Simmons found Pottingeria and Mortonia to be closely related to the families Parnassiaceae and Celastraceae, as they were then defined, but not in either of them.

They found that Siphonodon and Empleuridium are proper members of the Celastraceae, removing considerable doubt about their placement there.

Except for taxa that were not sampled, these results were confirmed by the second phylogeny of the Celastrales, which was produced by Mark Simmons and several co-authors in 2008.

In their APG II classification in 2003, the Angiosperm Phylogeny Group recognized three families in the Celastrales – Lepidobotryaceae, Parnassiaceae, and Celastraceae.

When they revised their classification in 2009, they recognized only two families because Pottingeria and the two genera of Parnassiaceae were transferred to the Celastraceae.

In 2008, Simmons and others produced a phylogeny of the Celastrales that achieved better resolution than the 2006 study by sampling more species and more DNA.

[15] Lepidobotrys Ruptiliocarpon Lepuropetalon Parnassia Pottingeria Mortonia Quetzalia Zinowiewia Peripterygia Siphonodon Dicarpellum Tripterococcus Macgregoria Stackhousia Menepetalum Psammomoya Denhamia Maytenus Gyminda Tripterygium Celastrus Paxistima Crossopetalum Canotia Euonymus Empleuridium Pterocelastrus Mystroxylon Robsonodendron Salaciopsis Catha Hartogiella Cassine Maurocenia Lydenburgia Gymnosporia Polycardia Brexia Pleurostylia Elaeodendron Pseudocatha Kokoona Lophopetalon Salacia Tontelea Plagiopteron Hippocratea Pristimera Loeseneriella