Sectional relationship of Hypericum (Clusiaceae) based on the molecular data Seon-Joo Park and Ki-Joong Kim, Institute of Biotechnology and Department of Biology, Yeungnam University, Korea Hypericum, a large genus of Clusiaceae, is consists of 30 sections and 450 species. The genus distribute worldwide. Considerable advances have been made in establishing phylogenetic hypothesis for the genus Hypericum using morphological data. However, the evolutionary directions of morphological characters are often limited to understanding the evolution of the genus. To examine the sectional phylogeny of Hypericum, we sequenced the ITS regions of nuclear rDNA and trnL-F and pasA-ycf3 regions of chloroplast genome. The data shows well-resolved phylogeny for the sectional relationships. The basal group in the genus is the section Campylosporus that mainly distributed in Tropical Africa and Mexico. The section Brathys derived from the section Spachium. The cosmopolitan section Hypericum was paraphyletic group. The geological isolation clearly has played a major role in the evolution of this genus.

Key words: Hypericum, molecular data