kingdom in order to account for the specific competitiveness and productivity of these two large Solanales families. To this end, it has been necessary to take a bird’s-eye view of 200 years of phytochemical research on the Solanales, since first scientific reports with regard to both families were published in the early nineteenth century. Due to an almost complete lack of phytochemical reports (one single exception) on species of the three remaining, very small families of the order (see Chap. 2), they have not been considered. 1. 1. 2 General Role of the Secondary Metabolism for a Specific Characterization and Classification of Plant Taxa While traditional systematics generally focused on morphologic-anatomical char- ters of plants, in some cases chemotaxonomic aspects with regard to low molecular secondary metabolites were also considered. However, plant biochemistry and chemotaxonomy normally played a minor role in classification. |