“The absence of any known series of such intermediates imposes severe restrictions on morphologists interested in the ancestral source of angiosperms [flowering plants] and leads to speculation and interpretation of homologies and relationships on the basis of the most meager circumstantial evidence.” Charles B. Beck, Origin and Early Evolution of Angiosperms (New York: Columbia University Press, 1976), p. 5.
“The origin of angiosperms, an ‘abominable mystery’ to Charles Darwin, remained so 100 years later and is little better today.” Colin Patterson et al., “Congruence between Molecular and Morphological Phylogenies,” Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics, Vol. 24, 1993, p. 170.
