Legume Phylogeny Dungeon

The family Fabaceae is one of the most ecologically successful and diverse plant families in the world, especially in arid and subtropical regions. In this episode we talk Legumes - their ecology, floral morphology and evolution - with Marty Wojciechowski at ASU. We talk about the 50kb inversion, psychoactive and poisonous secondary chemistry, subfamily classifications elucidated by molecular phylogenetics, how mimosoids lack Rhizobium root affiliations (bummer) and a bunch more interesting sh#t. Plant in the thumbnail photo is Schotia afra.