Hopea and Shorea are economically important timber tree genera distributed throughout South-East Asia. The taxonomic limits of these genera are problematic. Molecular phylogenies of Hopea and Shorea were inferred using two non-coding regions of chloroplast ( trn L -trn F) and nuclear ribosomal (internal transcribed spacer) DNA. The inferred phylogenetic relationships between Hopea and Shorea indicate that Shorea is paraphyletic and that Hopea is potentially monophyletic (particularly section Dryobalanoides ). The inferred groupings within Shorea are very similar to a previous classification based on timber characteristics. The present study also identified four anomalous taxa, whose phylogenetic positions and taxonomic status require further investigation.

The genus Pouteria Aublet is a pantropical group and many of its species produce high-quality timber and edible fruit. In 1991, on the basis of morphological characters, Pennington combined the genus Planchonella Pierre with Pouteria, expanding the latter genus to nine sections and 325 species. However, many Planchonella species were not included in his account and doubt remains about the generic limits of Pouteria sensu Pennington. This paper re-assesses the generic delimitation of Pouteria and its affinities with Planchonella from molecular data generated from the nuclear-encoded internal transcribed spacer (ITS) region. The analysis includes 22 Planchonella species and three Pouteria species sensu van Royen collected from Malesia and Australia, and seven additional Planchonella species from New Caledonia with molecular data available from GenBank. Other genera from Sapotaceae included in the analysis were Chrysophyllum, Niemeyera, Pichonia, Pycnandra and Xantolis (tribe Chrysophylleae) and Mimusops, Palaquium and Manilkara (outgroups from other tribes). The resulting ITS cladograms from both Bayesian and maximum parsimony analyses indicated that Malesian and Australasian Pouteria species are not monophyletic and comprise three separate lineages, therefore providing evidence against the broad circumscription of this genus by Pennington. Tertiary leaf venation type (reticulate, parallel or ramified), when mapped onto the phylogeny, correlated with these groupings, indicating that this character is taxonomically informative.

All 21 species of the genus Pultenaea Sm. with glabrous and/or apically tufted ovaries are revised and 17 names are reduced to synonymy for the first time. The following three new species are described: Pultenaea alea de Kok, Pultenaea maritima de Kok and Pultenaea rostrata de Kok. Three species (P. glabra, P. humilis and P. subspicata) are lectotypified and a key to the group is provided. A brief discussion is given as to the legitimacy of these species being treated as a separate group. The importance of the ovary indumentum character and its character states and the various forms of the bracteole are briefly discussed.