High confidence in angiosperm phylogenetic inference is achieved when estimates from all three genomic compartments are identical. Recent studies have shown that estimates from the nuclear, plastid, and mitochondrial genomes are largely in agreement for many higher level flowering plant relationships. In conjunction with genomic congruence, confidence is heightened in cases where different methods (e.g. parsimony, neighbor-joining, maximum likelihood) estimate identical relationships as well. In contrast to congruent genomic relationships obtained for higher level angiosperm relationships, different methods sometimes estimate contrasting but well supported phylogenies for the same taxa and data. Several striking examples of method-dependent conflicting phylogenetic estimates will be discussed including the putative first branch of angiosperm phylogeny.

Key words: angiosperm phylogenetics, congruence analysis, neighbor-joining, unweighted parsimony