The perennial herb Western Jacob's Ladder ( Polemonium occidentale , Polemoniaceae) is widespread in the mountains of western North America but reappears as a disjunct in the Great Lakes Region in Minnesota and Wisconsin, USA as the narrow endemic P. occidentale subsp. lacustre . This distribution is shown by a diverse assemblage of angiosperms. It has been hypothesized that these species became isolated just after the Last Gl...

A proactive approach to conservation must be predictive, anticipating how habitats will change and which species are likely to decline or prosper. We use composite species distribution modelling to identify suitable habitats for 18 members of the North American Atlantic Coastal Plain Flora (ACPF) since the Last Glacial Maximum and project these into the future. We then use Scirpus longii (Cyperaceae), a globally imperiled ACPF...

Aim Across angiosperm families, the area occupied by a family is strongly correlated with its richness. We explore the causes of this area‐richness correlation using the cosmopolitan family, Cyperaceae Juss., as a model. We test the hypothesis that, despite a proposed tropical origin, temperate lineages in the family diversified at elevated rates. We test the hypothesis that the area‐richness correlation is maintained within i...