The plant tree of life: an overview and some points of view

2004/10/01 by Jeffrey D. Palmer, Pamela S. Soltis, Mark W. Chase · 5 citations
Agricultural and Biological Sciences · #Plant Diversity and Evolution #Plant and animal studies #Plant Parasitism and Resistance

paper · pdf · doi:10.3732/ajb.91.10.1437

openalex publication_date 2004/10/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/26

Abstract

We provide a brief overview of this special issue on the plant tree of life, describing its history and the general nature of its articles. We then present our estimate for the overall topology and, for land plants, divergence times of the plant tree of life. We discuss several major controversies and unsolved problems in resolving portions of this tree. We conclude with a few thoughts about the prospects for obtaining a comprehensive, robustly resolved, and accurately dated plant tree of life and the importance of such a grand endeavor.

Citations

• Fragments of the earliest land plants
• Nothing in Biology Makes Sense except in the Light of Evolution
• Phylogenetics of Seed Plants: An Analysis of Nucleotide Sequences from the Plastid Gene rbcL

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