Utility of wood anatomical characters in cladistic analyses

Wood anatomy is an important source of systematically informative character information that can and should be used in cladistic phylogenetic analyses of relationships in flowering plants. However, the results of a cladistic analysis are only as good as the characters and observations, which togethe r comprise the data set that is analyzed. The goal of this paper is to addr ess the former of these issues, specifically the definition and use of wood anatomical characters in cladistic analyses. We first provide a brief intr oduction to the principles of cladistics. We then discuss the standard IAWA List of wood anatomical characters, which are defined primarily for identi fication, and recast them in a format that is more appropriate for cladisti c analysis. As a means of illustrating some common problems and their possi ble solutions, we conclude with a brief discussion of recent cladistic anal yses that have included wood anatomical characters.