Abstract: The Compositae have long attracted attention as a well marked but highly variable group, so distinct as to render their affinities doubtful. A number of efforts to elucidate their phylogeny have been made in the nearcentury since Darwin, without conspicuous success. This paper represents an effort to summarize the information available on the origin of the family, and on the evolutionary developments and broad relationships within the group. On many points the evidence permits a reasoonably firm conclusion; other items remain doubtful, and await further studies not only of the Compositae but of their possible ancestors. The recognition of the Compositae as a distinct group dates back at least several hundred years, and probably even to Theophrastus (see historical summary by Small, 1917). Linnaeus was so impressed with the unity of the group that he departed from the general principles of his sexual system to unite the genera into his class Syngenesia. Although some of the tribes, notably the Cichorieae and Cynareae, were evidently recognized by pre-Linnaean authors, the establishment and delimitation of the tribes was essentially the work of Cassini (1826, 1829, 1834). Some of his tribes are now received as sub-tribes, but the basic outlines of his organization remain. The most monumental contribution to our understanding of the family is that of George Bentham, as shown in the Genera Plantarum and in his separate paper (1873) on the family. After 80 years, his system stands essentially unaltered, and his tentative speculations on phylogeny are in my opinion more nearly correct than those of any of his successors. It may not be generally realized, however, that his treatment of the Compositae and other groups in the Genera Plantarum, while it attempted to be natural, was not phylogenetic in the modern sense of the term. He attempted to put related things together, and to arrive at a concept of relationships by considering the whole ensemble of characters rather than by assigning fixed arbitrary values to individual characters, but he did not necessarily start with the most primitive group and proceed to the most specialized. Thus, although he suggests (1873, p. 482) that the Heliantheae come the nearest of all the tribes to matching the necessary characters of the hypothetical progenitor of the group, the sequence of tribes in the Genera Plantarum starts with the Vernonieae, and places the Heliantheae near the middle, as the fifth tribe. I quote: