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In 1993, a shrub with yellow flowers reminiscent of but obviously distinct from Turnera was found near Mabura Hill in central Guyana, which was recollected in 2000. This paper offers a morphological description including leaf and wood anatomy and pollen morphology in addition to a phylogenetic analysis based on plastid DNA. Thanks to these studies, the mysterious species can now be assigned a position within the larger context of Passifloraceae. Our molecular results also show that the 'unknown yellow', as the plant became informally known, belongs to Passifloraceae, in which it is well supported as sister to Turneroideae. It is here described as the new genus and species, Pibiria flava, and because it lacks several floral characters typically (but not universally) found in this subfamily (heterostylous, fused sepals/petals, adnation of the stamens to the calyx, presence of a corolla and clawed petals), we also propose a new subfamily, Pibirioideae, to accommodate it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although Echinosophora Nakai has been known as a monotypic and endemic genus of Papillionoideae of Fabaceae in Korea, it has been controversial whether it is distinct from or merged with Sophora. To resolve this matter, we conducted molecular phylogenetic analyses using nucleotide sequence data from the plastid rbcL gene and trnL (UAA) intron. Parsimony analysis, using a total of 53 taxa of the Papillionoideae (including E. koreensis [Nakai] Nakai and several species of Sophora and related genera) and using 20 taxa of Caesalpinioideae and Mimosoideae as outgroups, showed that, although the examined species of Sophora are split into two clades, E. koreensis formed a common clade with S. tomentosa (the type species of the genus) and S. flavescens. E. koreensis therefore should be treated as S. koreensis Nakai, and the generic name Echinosophora be eliminated. We also investigated the embryology of S. koreensis (=E. koreensis) and S. flavescens and found that no differences existed between them. Our molecular study, like other studies, strongly suggested that Sophora is polyphyletic. In this study we presented a summary of embryological features of the core Sophora for future critical comparison with related and unrelated taxa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]