section Camphora; 2. section Cinnamomum; 3. neotropical triplinerved; 4. neotropical 
pinninerved) were separated for the analysis to assess their relationship they came out as a single 
clade (figure 24). This outcome may strengthen in some way the idea that these four entities 
currently regarded as pertaining to Cinnamomum actually conform a separate evolutionary line 
within the Lauraceae. Also, it implies that other characters besides the vegetative ones that 
separate the four groups might be more important to maintain the genus as a unit; that is the case 
of traits like persistent tepals in the fruit, and perigynous flowers. The closer relationship 
between Cinnamomum (1) and Cinnamomum (3) is due to the presence of domatia. The 
separation of Cinnamomum (4) from the rest is because of the presence of opposite strictly 
triplinerved leaves. 
In the end, it is interesting to find that, based on the characters used in this study, 
qd Cinnamomum can be supported as a distinct phylogenetic line in the Lauraceae. Yet, it will be 
interesting to see if this preliminary result is maintained when information that was not available 
now is incorporated; that is the case of, for example, the presence of perulate leaf buds in section 
Camphora, a feature that is also present in other Asian genera, and the study of arylpropanoids in 
the neotropical species. 
The analysis of Neotropical Ci 
With respect to the analysis of the phylogenetic relationships within the neotropical 
species of Cinnamomum, the situation unfortunately is not much different from what is found at 
the genus level. Macromorphological characters that can be used without too much ambiguity to 
study species relationhips are considerably few. Furthermore, characters that can be ordered in a 
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