A New Understanding of the Early Evolution of Flowering Plants

 
The folks over at the UBC Botanical Gardens have written an easy-to-understand summary of the recently published Nature paper on Hydatellaceae [A New Understanding of the Early Evolution of Flowering Plants].

Turns out that Hydatellaceae, a family of flowering plants, diverged from other flowering plants before the monocot-dicot split. They are related to water lilies, another group that branches deep in the tree of flowering plants. There are some pretty pictures of various species in the Hydatellaceae family over on the Botany Photo of the Day website. The one shown here is Trithuria submersa a species from Western Australia. These are very small plants and most of them are only found in Australia and New Zealand.