Our analysis yielded 106 most parsimonious trees of 408 steps, but these are similar in overall structure. A strict consensus is shown in Fig. 1. The va riations involve combinations of different outgroup arrangements and diffe rent arrangements within three major annonaceous groups : the ambavioid group, the annonoid group, and the clade including the uvarioid and xylopioid groups. Rather different arrange ments of major groups and certain in dividual taxa are seen among one step less parsimonious trees, although many features are similar. The consistency index is 0.27, which is low for this num ber of taxa (Sanderson and Donoghue,
1989). This means that the level of homoplasy is high, so the details should not be taken too seriously. Many characters appear to be systematically worthless at this level of analysis, in the