Charles Hose

Fissistigma nanningense sp. nov. (Annonaceae) is described based on well-preserved mummified leaves from the Oligocene Yongning Formation of Nanning, Guangxi, southern China. They are characterized by retuse apex, a swollen petiole, eucamptodromous to simple brochidodromous secondary veins, percurre…

Yunnan in SW China is a world renowned hotspot for diverse species of vascular plants such as ferns. However, fossil records of the Cenozoic ferns there are insufficient to clarify their phylogeny and historical biogeography from a geological perspective. Among these derived ferns, the monogeneric f…

Heterospory was a pivotal evolutionary innovation for land plants, but it has never been clear why it evolved. We used the geographic distributions of 114 species of the heterosporous lycophyte Selaginella to explore the functional ecology of microspore and megaspore size, traits that would be corre…

Fossil palms provide qualitative evidence of (sub-) tropical conditions and frost-free winters in the geological past, including modern cold climate regions (e.g., boreal, or polar climates). The freeze intolerance of palms varies across different organs and life stages, with seedlings in particular…

Rapidly growing biological data –including molecular sequences and fossils– hold an unprecedented potential to reveal how evolutionary processes generate and maintain biodiversity. However, researchers often have to develop their own idiosyncratic workflows to integrate and analyse these data for re…