Abstract:The Palmae is a pantropic family comprising 198 genera and 2670 species of six subfamilies and fourteen tribes. Among them the Trib. Corypheae is considered as the most primitive one of the family, on the contrary the Trib. Geonomeae is the advanced one.According to Takhtajan's division of floristic regions of the world,the family occurs in thirteen regions including subkingdom or kingdom (see table 1. ), viz. Eastern Asiatic Region, North American Atlantic Region, Mediterranean Region, Madrean Region, African subkingdom, Madagascan subkingdom, Indomalesian subkingdom, Polynesian subkingdom, Neocaledonian Region, Neotropical kingdom,Northeast Australian Region, Fernandezian Region and Neozeylandic Region. The Indomalesian subkingdom and Neotropical kingdom are the greatest concentration of genera and species.There are sixteen genera and eighty-five species of the family in China. According to Wu ZhengYi's "The Areal-Types of Chinese Genera of Seed PlantS", the distribution of this family may be sorted into five areal types, i. e. Tropical Asia, Africa (or East Africa, Madagascar) and Australasia disjunction ; Tropical Asia and Tropical Australasia; Tropical Asia to Tropical Africa, Tropical Asia (IndoMalesia) ; and East Asia. Although there is no endemic genus of Palmae in China, of the 16 genera occur in China, 9 belong to Tropical Asia and the East Asia, occupying 56. 2% of the total genera..This shows that the Palmae of China is closely related to Tropical Asia and becomes a pet of its total.As for the origin of Palmae, there are two different views, i. e. from West Gondwanaland (Moore, 1973a) or from Laurasia (Uh1 and Dransfield, 1987). The fossil records and the analysis of morphological characters have shown that, firstly, the most primitive taxa of the family belong to genera Trithrinax, Chelyocarpus and Cryosophila of Coryphoideae, growing in South America at 10° N30° S; Secondly, Calamoideae and Phytelephantoideae are considered parallel with Coryphoideae in evolution. Some genera of them such as Laccosperma, Eremospatha and the three genera of Phytelephantoideae are not only the least specialized genera but also existing in West Africa or the Congo Basin and in west or northwest of South America. It seems reasonable to presume that the West Gondwanaland or the regions of South America at 10° N to 30° S and Africa at 15°N to 15° S are the centers of origin of Palmae for the greatest concentration of primitive taxa.The fossil records show that the time of origin of Palmae may dates from early Cretaceous period.The fossils indicate that since the occurrence of palmaceous plants in the West Gondwanaland,they had been firstl developed and followed by dispersal along four routes, i. e. Europe-GreenlandNorth America, South Asia-Southeast Asia or East Asia, India-Southeast Asia or Australia, and Antarctica-Australia routes, and later reached Central America through South America.
