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Floral Evolution

Amborella trichopoda (Amborellaceae), the putative sister to all other angiosperms. Scanning electron micrographs of female and male flowers. Scale bars = 100μm. Photos: P.Rudall, M.Box.

Research on floral evolution is inspired by large-scale conceptual issues that seek to determine the origin and homologies of the flower and its components in angiosperms and their sister groups. Such studies at Kew span the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries; earlier examples include the Jodrell-based paleobotanical studies of D. H. Scott and his colleagues and the Herbarium-based work of Melville and his colleagues in the context of the 'New Morphology'. They draw not only on the broad assemblage of empirical data on comparative floral morphology that is common currency at Kew, driven largely by taxonomic questions, but also on the existing phylogenetic perspective. Thus, the advent of molecular systematics in the early 1990's, augmented by new understanding of the genetic bases for morphological features in a limited range of model organisms, have stimulated fresh studies on floral evolution at Kew within a phylogenetic framework.

At least 35 papers on floral evolution have been published in peer-reviewed publications since 2000, including several in higher impact journals.

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