grasses and gondwana

[Peter Stevens]

>I had already replied to Ken, but since there are two messages.  You
>can see an outline phylogeny of Poales on /APweb/ if you go to
>Missouri Botanical garden reserarch site
>(http://www,mobot,org/MOBOT/research/APweb/welcome/html)   (I always
>get the last two phrases wrong - anyhow, go to Missouri Botanical
>garden research site).  Kare Bremer has a paper coming out soon in
>Evolution which will help a lot in clarifying phylogeny adjacent to
>Poaceae. Anomochlooideae, sister to rest of Poaceae, are S.
>American, sister to Poaceae itself is a small Australian family
>(Bremer's finding), sister to the two... - and so on.  It has indeed
>been evident for quite some time that the members of the clade in
>which Poaceae are situated are predominantly southern, a couple more
>or less Malesian-Pacific.


P.





>Dear All,
>     Following up on my last post.  It is interesting that some of the
>closest relatives of true grasses (Poaceae) seem to be "graminoids" like
>Restionaceae which seem to be southern forms.
>     Could the true grasses and close relatives perhaps have been more
>widespread than we previously realized (especially in the southern
>hemisphere) during the Cretaceous?
>     Any botanical biogeographers out there who could fill me in on this?
>Perhaps gondwanatheres and early grasses evolved together in some way?
>           ------  Thanks,  Ken
>
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