At 5:02 PM -0500 11/12/03, Adrienne Smith wrote:

>A while back someone on the post mentioned that olive is related to
>macadamia.  I did some research and all I found was taht olive is from the
>oleaceae family, and macadamia is from the proteaceae family.  Could
>someone explain if and how these two families are related?

Sorry for the late reply.

That was me saying they are related. Olives and Macadamias are the only
two members of the order Proteales. Within this order are the family
Elaeagnaceae (Oleaster) and family Proteaceae (Macadamia).

So their family tree looks like:

Division: Angiosperms
  Class: Dicotyledons
    Subclass: Rosiflorae
      Order: Proteales
        Family: Elaeagnaceae
        Family: Proteaceae

I'm not sure just how closely this means they are related though!
They are certainly widely differentiated by geography.

Am excellent resource for tracking down plant relationships is at:
http://www.purr.demon.co.uk/Food/index.html

 ...R.