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Cover Illustration: A scaly tree fern, Cyathea sp., in a misty montane rainforest of Ecuador (Tapichalaca, Zamora Chinchipe). The scaly tree ferns (Cyatheaceae) are distinguished from other tree ferns by scales on stems and petioles. They are almost exclusively arborescent, reaching 20 m in some species, with leaves several meters long. Of the major groups of tree ferns, the Cyatheaceae comprise more than 85% of the diversity. Phylogenetic analyses of DNA sequence data from five plastid regions were used by Korall et al. to address some long-standing questions regarding relationships and character evolution within scaly tree ferns. Four major clades of scaly tree ferns were identified: Sphaeropteris, Alsophila, Cyathea, and the Gymnosphaera + Alsophila capensis clade. On the basis of the phylogeny, the shape of the scaly tree fern indusium, although homoplastic, provided useful phylogenetic information. See Korall et al.: A molecular phylogeny of scaly tree ferns (Cyatheaceae), pp. 873–886 in this issue. Photo credit: Didrik Vanhoenacker.