Phylogenetics of flowering plants

Phylogenetics of flowering plants reconstructs evolutionary relationships among angiosperms from evidence such as DNA sequences, fossils, and anatomical traits.

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Angiosperm: A seed plant whose ovules are enclosed in carpels, with seeds developing inside fruits. Flowering plants are the group whose evolutionary relationships this field reconstructs.
DNA barcoding: Species identification using short, standardized regions of DNA. The same marker regions used for identification can reveal relationships among flowering plants.
Amborella: A genus of flowering plants endemic to New Caledonia and the sole living member of Amborellaceae. Its lineage is commonly placed as the earliest-diverging living branch of flowering plants.
Charles Darwin: The English naturalist who developed the theory of evolution by natural selection. Darwin recognized that flowering-plant origins posed a major evolutionary puzzle.
Early angiosperm evolution: The diversification and relationships of the earliest flowering-plant lineages. Their rapid ancient divergence leaves key branching details difficult to resolve.
Cladistics: A method of classifying organisms by shared derived characters and representing their relationships as branching clades. Its shared-derived-character logic underlies many flowering-plant classifications.
Maximum likelihood: A statistical method that selects the model and tree making observed data most probable. It estimates trees from sequence data while accounting for models of molecular change.
Magnoliids: A major angiosperm group including magnolias, laurels, and black pepper relatives. Their position among early-diverging angiosperms has been tested across molecular datasets.
Adolf Engler: A German botanist known for influential systems of plant classification. His morphology-based classifications shaped botanical thinking before molecular phylogenetics.
Angiosperm radiation: The evolutionary diversification of flowering plants into their exceptional range of lineages. Its timing and causes remain debated as phylogenies and fossils improve.