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James W. Tregear, Alain Rival, Jean-Christophe Pintaud, A family portrait: unravelling the complexities of palms, Annals of Botany, Volume 108, Issue 8, December 2011, Pages 1387–1389, https://doi.org/10.1093/aob/mcr269
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Palms (Arecaceae) form one of the most distinctive of all plant families and are emblematic of the tropical regions of the world, in which most of their natural biodiversity is concentrated. According to the most recent estimates, the palm family contains nearly 2500 species. A large number of them are exploited in some way for human purposes; indeed, the Arecaceae have been recognized as being one of the three most important plant families in terms of human usage, along with the Poaceae and the Fabaceae (Balick and Beck, 1990; http://www.fao.org/docrep/X0451E/X0451e04.htm). Although a handful of species such as date palm (Phoenix dactylifera), oil palm (Elaeis guineensis) and coconut (Cocos nucifera) occupy a particularly high profile, due to their economic importance, many members of the Arecaceae have uses that extend far beyond their natural habitat. From an ecological point of view, palms are omnipresent in the tropical rainforests that form many of the world's biodiversity hotspots. Fossil records date their origins back as far as the early Cretaceous period and provide evidence that the basic bauplan of the Arecaceae was a successful one in evolutionary terms, corroborated by the great biodiversity of the family today.
