Pericallis includes 14 species endemic to the archipelagos of the Azores, Canary Islands, and Madeira. Species in the genus occur in all five ecological zones except the high altitude desert and they exhibit considerable variation in growth form and floral biology. We have examined cpDNA restriction site variation for all species of Pericallis and several closely related continental genera. We detected 135 parsimony informative restriction site changes among the 403 variable sites using 22 restriction enzymes. The cpDNA data produce highly resolved and well supported trees which are largely congruent with previous trees generated from nuclear ITS data. We plotted both growth form (woody versus herbaceous), ecology, and island distribution on the combined tree from both markers. Two evolutionary trends are evident from these comparisons. First, there have been at least two independent origins of woodiness in the island endemics from a herbaceous continental ancestor. Second, inter-island colonization between similar ecological zones on different islands is the major avenue of evolution, a pattern that we have observed previously in several other Macaronesian endemics.

Key words: Asteraceae, Islands, Macaronesia, Pericallis, Senecioneae