Smilacaceae, the greenbrier family, is a family of flowering plants. Up to some decades ago the genera now included in family Smilacaceae were often assigned to a more broadly defined family Liliaceae, but for the past twenty to thirty years most botanists have accepted Smilacaceae as a distinct family. It is considered that the two families diverged around 55 million years ago during the Early Paleogene possibly near the boundary between Paleocene and Eocene. One characteristic that distinguishes ...