Polygonaceae

Polygonaceae Juss., Gen. Pl. 82. 1789. nom. cons. 'Buckwheat Family'

Characteristic Features:

Annual or perennial herbs, shrubs, lianas, vines or trees with often swollen nodes
Leaves spirally arranged, simple and may have stipulate ochrea
Inflorescence of fasciculate units of small actinomorphic flowers
Perianth monochlamydeous, 3+3 or 5 connate tepals
Ovary superior, tricarpellary, syncarpous, unilocular, uniovulate with basal and mostly orthotropous ovule
Fruit a 3-sided achene or nutlet

Diversity:

World- 59 genera 1,384 species (The Plant List 2013); 48 genera 1,200 species (Christenhusz & Byng 2016); 52 genera, 1200 species (Mabberely 2017); 54 genera, 1566 species (Roskov et al. 2021)
India - 18 genera 164 species (Karthikeyan 2000); 16 genera, 117 species (BSI, 2021)
Indian Himalaya- 16 genera, 127 species (Singh et al. 2019)
Uttarakhand - 12 genera 75 species (Uniyal et al. 2007)

General Characters:

Polygonaceae in Watson & Dallwitz (1992 onwards)
Polygonaceae in Stevens (2001 onwards)
Polygonaceae in POWO 2021 (Plants of the World Online)
Polygonaceae in Wikipedia

Systematic Position of the Family in Different Systems of Classifications:

Systematic position in 2-Superkingdom, 7-Kingdom classification of Ruggiero et al. (2015)

Super Kingdom- Eukaryota, Kingdom- Plantae, Subkingdom- Viridiplantae, Infrakingdom- Streptophyta, Superphylum- Embryophyta, Phylum- Tracheophyta, Subphylum- Spermatophytina, Superclass- Angiospermae, Class- Magnoliopsida, Superorder- Caryophyllanae, Order- Caryophyllales