XVI International Botanical Congess

The genus Prunus L. (Rosaceae, Prunoideae), many of which are economically important, is primarily distributed in temperate regions of the Northern Hemisphere, with centers of diversity in China, Korea, South West Asia and North America. This work addresses the problem of taxonomic disagreement at the infrageneric level by conducting parsimony analysis of ITS, a nuclear locus, with the purpose of reconstructing the phylogeny of Prunus. Fifty species representing all the subgenera and most sections were included in the study. The genus Oemleria was chosen as outgroup. 110 characters were parsimony informative. High levels of homoplasy were found, particularly in the plum-apricot group, subgenus Prunophora. Our results support the monophyly of the subgenera Cerasus and Amygdalus. Species of Prunophora form a clade in the consensus tree but its bootstrap support is low. Species in the subgenus Lithoceraus Ingram do not form a clade, with some of them being closer to Prunophora and others more basal, suggesting that it may be an artificial group.