Plant Phylogeny Made Easy (Sort of)

British researchers have identified the barcode gene for plants, the BBC reports. Co-author Vincent Savolainen, of Imperial College London and the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, found that matK, a small gene located in the chloroplast of the plant, has enough variation to identify between species but is nearly identical in plants of the same species. While the gene won't be able to tell every plant on the planet apart, especially in light of how often cross-breading happens among plants, it'll get as close as distinguishing between 90% of them, the researchers say.