Cinnamomeae
The Cinnamomeae comprize about half of all Lauraceae, or about 80% of the New World Lauraceae. At present, most authors recognize the following genera: Aiouea (ca. 70 spp.), Aniba (ca. 40 spp.), Cinnamomum (ca. 200 spp.?), Damburneya (ca. 20 spp.), Dicypellium (2 spp.), Endlicheria (ca. 60 spp.), Gamanthera (1 sp.), Kubitzkia (1 sp.), Licaria (ca. 50 spp.), Nectandra (ca. 100 spp.), Ocotea (ca. 400 spp.?), Paraia (1 sp.), Phyllostemonodaphne (1 sp.), Pleurothyrium (ca. 50 spp.), Povedadaphne (1 sp.), Rhodostemonodaphne (ca. 40 spp.), Sassafras (3 spp.), Umbellularia (1 sp.) and Urbanodendron (3 spp).
The only purely Old World genus in this group is Cinnamomum, and recent results (see below) suggest that the two sections of the genus, sect. Cinnamomum and sect. Camphora, form two subsequent evolutionary lineages rather than a single one. Sassafras has two species in East Asia, one in North America. Ocotea, in its current circumscription includes six species from Africa, ca. 40 from Madagascar and neighboring islands, plus one species from the Makaronesian Islands (Canary Islands and Madeira), whereas the majority of the species is from tropical America. All other genera are entirely American (Umbellularia from California, all others from tropical and subtropical America).
Several phylogenetic analyses (Chanderbali et al., 2001; Trofimov et al., 2016; Huang et al., 2016; Rohde et al., 2017) do not yet yield sufficient resolution, but have some aspects in common:
- Cinnamomum sect. Cinnamomum and Cinnamomum sect. Camphora form separate evolutionary lineages at the base of the group.
- Sassafras is rather close to Cinnamomum. In some analyses it forms a clade with one of the two sections, though not always with the same one.
- Aiouea (incl. the Neotropical species previously placed in Cinnamomum) is the sister group of a clade including all remaining genera (excl. Cinnamomum and Sassafras).
- Ocotea is highly paraphyletic in its current circumscription, i.e., all of the entirely American genera are nested among species currently included in Ocotea.
- All clearly dioecious species form a monophyletic group, irrespective of whether they are currently placed in Endlicheria, Ocotea or Rhodostemonodaphne.
- Nectandra (s.str., excl. Damburneya) and Pleurothyrium are sister groups.