438 
Telopea 8(4): 2000 
Although the treatment of the Casuarinaceae by Wilson and Johnson (1989) placed 
taxa close to their presumed relatives, there is no current phylogenetic classification of 
the family from which species relationships can be investigated. Our study provides 
good evidence that there are useful seedling characteristics in the Casuarinaceae 
which might be used to investigate generic, sectional and species relationships within 
the family. However, it is not the intention of this paper to reject one set of characters 
used to classify the family in favour of another. Rather, it is hoped that the seedling 
characters presented here can be incorporated with as wide as possible a range of 
features from adult, seed and pollen morphology plus cytology so that future 
phylogenetic studies of the family can assess objectively the relative contribution and 
merits of all the available information. 
Acknowledgments 
This work was undertaken as part of a Ph.D. by RH, and the Department of Ecology 
and Evolutionary Biology at Monash University is thanked for the provision of 
facilities, as is the Department of Environmental Biology at the University of Adelaide 
for supporting RH as a distinguished visiting fellow. The late Dr L.A.S. Johnson is 
thanked for stimulating comments on this research. 
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