Kanieae, Engl.

Wilson, Peter G., Heslewood, Margaret M. & Tarran, Myall A., 2022, Three new tribes in Myrtaceae and reassessment of Kanieae, Australian Systematic Botany 35 (4), pp. 279-295 : 293

Kanieae Engl., in H. G. A. Engler (ed.), Nat. Pflanzenfam., 2nd edn. 2, 18a: 109 (1930)

Kanieae Peter G.Wilson ex Reveal, Phytoneuron 2012–37: 217 (2012), isonym.

Type: Kania Schlr.

Trees or shrubs; leaves opposite. Inflorescence axillary, cymes or panicles; flowers yellow; stamens free, in a single whorl on the hypanthial rim, evenly spaced or, occasionally, grouped opposite the petals; anthers with elongated connectives. Style terminal on the ovary; ovules scattered on basal placentas that are remote from the style. Fruit a capsule, exserted from the hypanthium; seeds linear; embryo straight; cotyledons lying face-to-face.

A monogeneric tribe of ~10 species that occurs only in Malesia (New Guinea and the Philippines). Fossil evidence ( Tarran et al. 2016, 2017) indicates that Kania may have been present in Australia in the late Eocene to Oligo-Miocene.

Nomenclatural note

Reveal (2012, p. 217) questioned the validity of the tribal name given in Wilson et al. (2005) and republished the tribe as ‘ Kanieae Peter G.Wilson ex Reveal , trib. nov., based on Kanioideae Engl.’, with the presumed implication that the simultaneous publication of Kanioideae and Kanieae by Engler (1930) made the latter name superfluous. However, alternative advice ( W. Greuter, pers. comm., 2014) is that the name Kanieae was validly published and that the Reveal name is an isonym.