Although tremendous progress has been made in resolving phylogenetic relationships, phylogenetic biology is still in its infancy, and we will see major breakthroughs both in phylogenetic analysis and in the use of phylogenetic trees in solving problems. For the last decade much of the effort of the plant systematics community has been focused on a relatively few phylogenetic problems and genes. This has been productive, but extensions are needed in several directions. Much more attention is needed to the smallest phylogenetic problems, involving very closely related lineages. This will require new markers and new coalescence-oriented theory. In studies of character evolution and rates of diversification we should take better advantage of the phylogenetic knowledge that is accumulating. Methods for piecing together this information need more attention, as do methods for inferring character changes and historical correlations. I also imagine a new set of links between phylogeny and ecology, focused especially on the structure and assembly of ecological communities. These links will leverage the methods of historical biogeorgaphy and co-diversification, but require a variety of new models and tools. Finally, in view of the unprecedented rate of clade discovery, and the increasing desire to make use of phylogenetic hypotheses, we desperately need new approaches to nomenclature and to databasing phylogenetic knowledge.

Key words: character evolution, community ecology, nomenclature, phylogeny, systematics