Legumes of the World. Edited by G. Lewis, B. Schrire, B. MacKinder & M. Lock. Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. (2005)
Polhill (1981r) followed Ohashi (1973b) in recognising the monogeneric tribe Euchresteae based on the genus Euchresta (c. 4 species).
Euchresta was previously included in subtribe Geoffroeeae of tribe Dalbergieae and was believed to be intermediate between this and subtribe Lonchocarpinae (Bentham, 1860, as ‘Lonchocarpeae’). Recent molecular evidence places Euchresta in the Sophora group of the core genistoids (Doyle et al., 1997; 2000; Crisp et al., 2000), supporting previous hypotheses of a close affinity with Sophora (Ohashi & Sohma, 1970; Ohashi, 1973b; Polhill (1981r: 402); Polhill, 1994; Chen et al., 1992; Matsuura et al., 1994).
Crisp et al. (2000) note evidence that strongly supports the grouping of Euchresta and Sophora, and the analysis of Kajita et al. (2001) even suggests Euchresta may be embedded within Sophora. As traditionally circumscribed, Sophora is polyphyletic (Käss & Wink, 1997; Crisp et al., 2000; Pennington et al., 2001) with certain elements, e.g., Styphnolobium and Calia probably falling outside the Genistoid clade (Wojciechowski et al., 2004).
A new, more narrowly circumscribed Sophoreae sens. strict. will thus have to include Euchresteae (providing the type species of Sophora, S. tomentosa L., belongs with the taxa so far sampled from subgenus Sophora (sensu Tsoong & Ma, 1981).
