Figure 6. Mixed branching silhouette-tree doodle depicting the molecular differentiation and evolution in Quercus Section Cerris.

The evolutionary or genealogical lineages are indicated by branches (accordingly labelled and coloured), the fields represent shared or unique gene pools. The deep incongruence between plastid genealogies and nuclear-morphological phylogenetic lineages can only be explained by ancient reticulation and incomplete lineage sorting during the formation and isolation of the modern-day lineages following the break-up of the ancestral gene pool (tentatively labelled as ‘proto-Ilex’).