Two research teams have each used the biggest collection yet of flowering-plant genes to map out the floral family tree.
“We got the same answer,” says Michael J. Moore of Oberlin College in Ohio. Both family trees show the same basic arrangement of the eight lineages that still bloom today. Five of the eight appear as short branches at the top, a sign that the five more-recent lineages split from each other rapidly.
Log in
Subscribers, enter your e-mail address for full access to the Science News archives and digital editions.