Inverted repeat-lacking clade

Inverted repeat-lacking clade
Galega officinalis
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Plantae
Clade: Tracheophytes
Clade: Angiosperms
Clade: Eudicots
Clade: Rosids
Order: Fabales
Family: Fabaceae
Subfamily: Faboideae
Clade: Meso-Papilionoideae
Clade: Non-protein amino acid-accumulating clade
Clade: Hologalegina
Clade: Inverted repeat-lacking clade
(Wojciechowski et al. 2000, 2004) Wojciechowski 2013
Tribes
Synonyms
  • Galegeae sensu lato sensu Polhill, 1981
  • IR-lacking clade
  • IRLC
  • Temperate herbaceous clade
  • THC

The inverted repeat-lacking clade (IRLC) is an informal monophyletic clade of the flowering plant subfamily Faboideae. Well-known members of this clade include chickpeas, broad or fava beans, vetch, lentils, peas, wisteria, alfalfa, clover, fenugreek, liquorice, and locoweeds. The name of this clade is informal and is not assumed to have any particular taxonomic rank like the names authorized by the ICBN or the ICPN. The clade is characterized by the loss of one of the two 25-kb inverted repeats in the plastid genome that are found in most land plants. It is consistently resolved in molecular phylogenies. The clade is predicted to have diverged from the other legume lineages 39.0±2.4 million years ago (in the Eocene). It includes several large, temperate genera such as Astragalus, Hedysarum, Medicago, Oxytropis, Swainsona, and Trifolium.