Rosales

Rosales is an order of flowering plants. It is sister to a clade consisting of Fagales and Cucurbitales. It contains about 7700 species, distributed into about 260 genera. Rosales comprises nine families, the type family being the rose family, Rosaceae. The largest of these families are Rosaceae (90/2500) and Urticaceae (54/2600). Rosales is divided into three clades that have never been assigned a taxonomic rank. The basal clade consists of the family Rosaceae; another clade consists of four families, including Rhamnaceae; and the third clade consists of the four urticalean families.

The order Rosales is strongly supported as monophyletic in phylogenetic analyses of DNA sequences, such as those carried out by members of the Angiosperm Phylogeny Group. In their APG III system of plant classification, they defined Rosales as consisting of the nine families listed in the taxobox on the right. The relationships of these families were uncertain until 2011, when they were resolved in a molecular phylogenetic study based on two nuclear genes and ten chloroplast genes.

Well-known members of Rosales include: roses, strawberries, blackberries and raspberries, apples and pears, plums, peaches and apricots, almonds, rowan and hawthorn, jujube, elms, banyans, figs, mulberries, breadfruit, nettles, hops and cannabis.