Infrageneric relationships within Pogostemon Desf. (Labiatae)

Abstract

Cladistic and phenetic analyses of the morphology of 79 species of Pogostemon Desf. sens lato have been undertaken. The cladistic analysis included 135 character state differences encoded as 41 binary or multistate characters. The phenetic analysis included 52 metric variables and 54 binary variables. There is a very good correspondence between the results of cladistic and phenetic analyses based on different data sets. The existence of several clearly marked clades/clusters has been demonstrated. Some groups/clades are similar to those previously taxonomically recognized but the relationships and membership of infra-generic groups have been clarified by these analyses, validating a revised infra-generic classification which has been proposed.