Comparative chemistry and taxonomy of the “Hamamelidales”.

Present day systematists have at least 150,000 species of angiospermous plants to deal with. Obviously, this large number must be divided into smaller groups, and several methods have been devised to separate them. The earliest workers used rather simple characters, resulting in very arbitrary divisions. For example, Theophrastus recognized trees, shrubs, under-shrubs and herbs. However, one modern taxonomist also uses this sort of division. Hutchinson (1926, 1948, 1959) divides the dicotyledons and monocotyledons into two main lines of development; i.e., the "Lignosae", or woody line, and the "Herbaceae" or herbaceous line