relatednes in plants

["Karpa-Wilson, Douglas" <dkarpawi at indiana_edu>]

From: "James Purchase" <jppurchase at rogers_com>
Going back one step up the tree, (Kingdom, Division, Class, Order, Family,
Genus, Species), all three genera are considered to be members of the Order
Alismatales So there is SOME relationship between all three genera (i.e. they ALL share a common ancestor at some time in the distant past).

But that is also akin to saying that everyone is related to the Queen of
England, if you trace your family tree back far enough.

James Purchase
Toronto


Just to add to a very nice explanation by James of relatedness, I wanted to point out that both you, James and the Queen of England are also related to Najas at some level, although the divergence between the monocellular eukaryotes that eventually gave rise to multicellular plants and the monocellular eukaryote that gave rise to us animals (and fungi) is quite some ways back there, but we do share a common ancestor somewhere back there.  So the question isn't so much ARE they related, but HOW RELATED are they.  Not that this really speaks to the original question at all, but it's been a long time since I've posted (and now you're glad of that!)

Doug