Abstract:Calycanthaceae is a small family with 4 genera and 10 species. In the present paper, a cladistic analysis is made using the methods of Maximal Same Steps, Minimal Parallel Evolution and Synthetic Maximal Diversity Method developed by Xu. According to the cladistic analysis, it is suggested that Chimonanthus may be an earliest branch from pre-Calycanthaceae, which almost retains all primitive characters of the ancestor, while Sinocalycanthus is closely related to Calycanthus. Both Sinocalycanthus and Calycanthus are of transit genera from primitive to advanced taxa in the Calycanthaceae， and Idiospermum is the most advanced in the family．
