Recent information from gene sequences has considerably enhanced our understanding of flowering plant phylogeny. Individual or combined data sets from a number of plastid, nuclear and mitochondrial genes have been used in deep level phylogenetic reconstruction of angiosperms. Emphasis, however, has been placed on using slow evolving genes with the notion that levels of homoplasy will be kept at a minimum. We have been exploring the potential contribution of the plastid matK gene and the non-coding parts of the trnT-F-region, both evolving at higher rates than other genomic regions used in deep-level angiosperm phylogenetic reconstruction. These two regions provide robust phylogenies for basal angiosperms that are congruent with each other and with recent angiosperm phylogenies based on combined data of gene sequences from the plastid and nuclear or from all three genomes. Analysis of the combined matK and trnT-F data sets resulted in a single most parsimonious tree. Statistical support for the majority of nodes substantially increased compared to previous analyses. Patterns of phylogenetic signal were analysed statistically and compared to other chloroplast regions in order to identify causes for the impressive performance of fast evolving genomic regions like matK and trnT-F.

Key words: basal angiosperms, fast evolving DNA, matK, molecular evolution, trnT-F