Machilus [SEP] parent taxon
Machilus
Machilus is a genus of flowering plants belonging to the family Lauraceae. It is found in temperate, subtropical, and tropical forest, occurring in China, Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Indonesia, Borneo, and the Philippines. It is sometimes included in the genus "Persea", and currently includes about 100 species.
Description.
"Machilus" are evergreen trees or shrubs, some species growing as much as 30 m tall. Their entire, pinnately veined leaves are alternately
Taxon in disguise
In bacteriology, a taxon in disguise is a species, genus or higher unit of biological classification whose evolutionary history reveals has evolved from another unit of similar or lower rank, making the parent unit paraphyletic. This happens when rapid evolution makes a new species appear radically different from the ancestral group, so that it is not (initially) recognised as belonging to the parent phylogenetic group, leaving the latter an evolutionary grade.
While the term is from bacteriology, parallel examples are found throughout the tree of