The
eudicots,
Eudicotidae or
eudicotyledons are a
monophyletic clade of
flowering plants that had been called
tricolpates or
non-magnoliid dicots by previous authors. The botanical terms were introduced in 1991 by evolutionary botanist James A. Doyle and paleobotanist Carol L. Hotton to emphasize the later evolutionary divergence of tricolpate
dicots from earlier, less specialized, dicots. The close relationships among flowering plants with tricolpate pollen grains was initially seen in morphological studies of
shared derived characters. These plants have a distinct trait in their pollen grains of exhibiting three colpi or grooves paralleling the polar axis. Later
molecular evidence confirmed the genetic basis for the evolutionary relationships among flowering plants with tricolpate pollen grains and dicotyledonous traits. The term means "true dicotyledons", as it contains the majority of plants that have been considered dicots and have
characteristics of the dicots. The term "eudicots" has subsequently been widely adopted in
botany to refer to one of the two largest clades of
angiosperms (constituting over 70% of the angiosperm species), monocots being the other. The remaining angiosperms are sometimes referred to as
basal angiosperms or paleodicots, but these terms have not been widely or consistently adopted, as they do not refer to a
monophyletic group.
