XVI International Botanical Congess
Four subspecies and two varieties have been morphologically recognized in Desmodium podocarpum. Kajita and Ohashi (1994) surveyed these taxa using RFLPs analysis of cpDNA, and reported three clades which were not consistent with the intraspecific classification. To examine the incongruence in detail, we performed RFLPs analysis covering wide distribution range of the species, and phylogenetic analysis using ITS sequences to obtain better resolution in phylogeny. The results show that one of the three groups are geographical tendency, and phylogenetic relationships obtained by ITS are not consistent with those by chloroplast data. This result can be the result of chloroplast capture. Unusual rate of nucleotide substitutions of rbcL gene among related taxa are also reported.