Magnoliids

magnoliid flower: trimerous

The name magnoliids (plural, not capitalized) or magnoliid complex is used by the APG II system for a clade within the angiosperms. The circumscription is:
* clade magnoliids :
*: order Canellales
*: order Laurales
*: order Magnoliales
*: order Piperales

This is unchanged from the APG system, of 1998. The clade belongs to neither of the advanced clades, the monocots nor the eudicots, but rather is a third big clade. This clade is the most important of the basal groups of the angiosperms. Informally it can be said to belong to the paraphyletic group of the palaeodicots.

The plants belonging to this clade of magnoliids are roughly those which in the Cronquist system were assigned to the subclass Magnoliidae, which is the basal group of class Magnoliopsida (the Cronquist name for the dicotyledons).