704 American Journal of Botany 98(4): 704–730, 2011; http://www.amjbot.org/ © 2011 Botanical Society of America 1 Manuscript received 11 October 2010; revision accepted 9 February 2011. The authors thank the University of Florida High-Performance Computing Center, the UF Genetics Institute, and facilities supported in part by NSF Grant CNS-0821622 for providing computational resources that faci...

The early diversification of angiosperms in diverse ecological niches is poorly understood. Some have proposed an origin in a darkened forest habitat and others an open aquatic or near aquatic habitat. The research presented here centers on Montsechia vidalii, first recovered from lithographic limestone deposits in the Pyrenees of Spain more than 100 y ago. This fossil material has been poorly ...

The continuing study of early angiosperms from the Yixian Formation (approximately 125 Ma) of northeastern China has yielded a second early angiosperm genus. This report is a detailed account of this early flowering plant and recognizes earlier reports of similar fossils from Russia and China. Entire plants, including roots, stems, and branches terminating in fruits are presented and reconstruc...