9321616 Stuessy The ornamental peonies and their wild relatives, placed in the isolated genus Paeonia, have fascinated and puzzled botanists for many years. Combining primitive and advanced morphological features, peonies have been related phylogenetically to numerous disparate groups of dicots but their evolutionary relationships remain unresolved. Under the direction of faculty adviser Dr. Tod Stuessy at Ohio State University, graduate student Tao Sang is conducting extensive field work in both the New and Old Worlds to amass materials for detailed morphological and DNA-based analyses of the ca. 30 species in the genus. New molecular data from chloroplast DNA and nuclear ribosomal DNA promise to yield robust characters for phylogenetic inference. In turn, a rigorously grounded phylogeny from morphological and molecular evidence will permit the analysis of intriguing disjunct geographical ranges in the present distribution of peonies in the northern hemisphere. New molecular and morphological evidence will be collected to study the phylogeny and biogeography of Paeonia, a fascinating group of widely distributed shrubs, with ornamental and medicinal properties.
