Growing family trees

摘要

You don't have to be a specialist to know that flowering plants (angiosperms) divide into mono-cots and dicots - a distinction immediately apparent when a seed germinates. Unfortunately, on closer inspection this simple distinction turns out not to beso simple after all. Current gene-based research suggests the way in which plants are understood and presented to the public needs to be substantially revised. This was the motivation for a recent conference at the National Botanic Garden of Wales, organised by PlantNetwork, an umbrella group for botanic gardens and plant collections in Britain and Ireland.