Amborella, a monotypic genus native to New Caledonia, has received much attention recently because of its proposed status as the basalmost clade of the angiosperms. The seemingly unisexual flowers of this small and little known shrub have only recently been studied to any great extent. To date, the documentation of the early stages of floral development has proven to be an extremely difficult nut to crack. There are two reason for this: 1) is the scarcity of material, especially in the appropriate stages of development, and 2) the near impossibility of dissecting the tiny floral buds. Not only are the floral buds small and fragile, but also the young primordia are so tightly packed that stages of initiation and early development are totally obscured by the older primordia. An opportunity to look at early floral development arose recently when the second author was able to collect young flowering shoots from male and female plants of Amborella trichopoda at the National Tropical Botanical Garden in Kauai, Hawaii. Although difficult to dissect, the initial stages in floral development clearly show a cup-like depression in the floral meristem and the initiation of primordia on the inner wall of the upgrowth in a tight spiral pattern. Very little of the floral meristem survives and earlier reports of possible female remnants in male flowers are rare. The early development of the carpel primordia is particularly intriguing since there are no signs of either horseshoe-like or peltate primordial development that is common to other presumptive early angiosperm flowers. The consequences of these observations will be discussed.

Key words: Amborella trichopoda, basalmost angiosperm, carpel, development, floral, meristem