Abstract:Interfamilial relationships of Santalales were investigated using chloroplast intron sequences. The lengths of trnL intron regions present considerable variation among the sampled Santalalean families, varying from 291 to 587 bp. The topology of strict consensus tree generated from parsimony analysis is largely congruent with trees previously published based on DNA sequences of other genes, which revealed the basal position of Schoepfia (Olacaceae), the monophyly of Loranthaceae and Viscaceae, and the paraphyly of Santalaceae．Loranthaceae are distinct from Viscaceae，the latter is derived from within Santalaceae．Our study also demonstrates the utility of the rapidly evolved chloroplast trnL intron for addressing relationships among the component taxa of San talales.
