Graftingiaceae

Graftingiaceae is a plant family name that has appeared in a limited number of botanical classifications but is not widely recognized in modern taxonomy. The circumscription and validity of Graftingiaceae vary among sources, and no universally accepted set of genera is associated with the name. In some historical treatments, the group was proposed to encompass a small number of genera with features diagnostic of flowering plants, but later authors have treated these genera as belonging to other families or left the group as incertae sedis. Consequently, there is no stable diagnostic description or geographic range that can be cited with confidence.

As a result, Graftingiaceae is often mentioned in discussions of the instability of early plant taxonomy and the challenges of classifying angiosperms before the advent of molecular phylogenetics. In modern classifications that rely on molecular data, the name is generally not recognized as a valid family; its inclusion is treated as obsolete, disputed, or subsumed within other families depending on the source.

References to Graftingiaceae today are mostly historical or bibliographic, appearing in retrospectives on the history of plant systematics rather than in contemporary floras. See also plant taxonomy, Angiosperm phylogeny, and taxonomic nomenclature.