Skip to main content

About

The Kew Tree of Life Explorer allows users to explore evolutionary trees of life and to access the genomic data that underpin them.

The Kew Tree of Life Explorer is an output of the Plant and Fungal Trees of Life Project (PAFTOL) at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. PAFTOL aims to discover and disseminate the evolutionary history of all plant and fungal genera. The evolutionary tree of life is fundamental to our understanding of the natural world. Comparative studies of DNA sequence data have revolutionised our knowledge of the tree of life, however many gaps remain. In collaboration with partners from around the world, PAFTOL is addressing this challenge by generating, compiling and analysing genomic data for all ca. 13,600 flowering plant and 8,200 fungal genera to build novel trees of life at unprecedented scale. Find out more about PAFTOL. An updated version of this dataset has also been analysed and published in Nature [ https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-024-07324-0].

This release of the Tree of Life Explorer focuses on flowering plants.

In the Tree of Life Explorer, you can:

  • Explore the tree of life using our tree viewer
  • Browse the species and samples included in the tree
  • Investigate the genomic data underpinning the tree of life
  • Download all genomic data and trees

We make regular updates to the Tree of Life Explorer, which means that the tree of life will grow as more data become available. If you can’t find the organism you are looking for now, please check again later!

If you want to know more about the technical methods behind the Tree of Life Explorer, you will find a summary on the Methods page. To explore research arising from PAFTOL, click here.