Examining the Origins of Flowering Plants

Excerpted from this Botany Photo of the Day:

“...[A] team of [UBC BGCPR-led] researchers has a paper being published in the March 15, 2007 edition of Nature, entitled “Hydatellaceae identified as a new branch near the base of the angiosperm phylogenetic tree”. These dwarf aquatic plants found in Australia, New Zealand and India were once thought to be in the order of plants that included the grasses, sedges, bromeliads and rushes (the Poales). Through an incongruous result noted when studying the relationships between early flowering plants, the UBC researchers asked one of the most important questions in science (“Why?”) and decided to investigate further. What they discovered was that the Hydatellaceae are a previously unrecognized ancient lineage of flowering plants – so ancient that they predate the “big split” between the monocots and dicots (or ex-dicots, as is now recognized) in the evolution of flowering plants, and are instead more closely related to the Nymphaeaceae, or water lilies. As Sean states in the UBC press release, ‘For botanists, this is like finding something you thought was a lizard is actually a living dinosaur.’”

Follow news coverage of this story, see more photographs and learn more on UBC Botanical Garden's page dedicated to the Hydatellaceae. News items will be updated on this page as links are made available.

Posted by Daniel Mosquin at 1:02 PM on March 14, 2007