One cautionary note with this study is that the methods employed (ancestral character evolution) do not permit the inference of trait values that fall outside o

One cautionary note with this study is that the methods employed (ancestral character evolution) do not permit the inference of trait values that fall outside of the observed range of extant variation. Adding fossils can significantly improve our estimates of the root state but unfortunately in this case there don't seem to be many fossil flowers to parameterize the model. There's been instances where using only data from extant species can mislead with respect to the hypothesized ancestral state. For one example, see figure 5 in http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1558-5646.2012.01723.x/full http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1558-5646.2012....