The commelinids are the only clade that the APG IV system has informally named within the monocots.

Members of the commelinid clade have cell walls containing UV-fluorescent ferulic acid.

Acorales Alismatales Petrosaviales Dioscoreales 115 Pandanales 91 Liliales 121 Asparagales 120 Arecales Poales Commelinales Zingiberales As of APG IV (2016) the family Dasypogonaceae is no longer directly placed under commelinids but instead a family of order Arecales.

[6] The commelinids were first recognized as a formal group in 1967 by Armen Takhtajan, who named them the Commelinidae and assigned them to a subclass of Liliopsida (monocots).

However, by the release of his 1980 system of classification, Takhtajan had merged this subclass into a larger one, and no longer considered it to be a clade.