ASTERIDAE

subclass of flowering plants belonging to the class Magnoliopsida. The Asteridae, one of the six subclasses in the class Magnoliopsida (dicotyledons), consists of 11 orders, 49 families, and nearly 60,000 species. About one-third of the species of Asteridae belong to the family Asteraceae (of the order Asterales), which is the largest family of dicotyledons and one of the two largest families of flowering plants. Arthur Cronquist The Editors of the Encyclopdia Britannica Additional reading Classification of the subclass is the subject of Gerhard Wagenitz, New Aspects of the Systematics of the Asteridae, Plant Systematics and Evolution, Supplementum, 1:375395 (1977). M.N. Clifford and K.C. Willson (eds.), Coffee (1985), explores an important crop.