Eudicots

The eudicots are a clade of flowering plants. The term "eudicots" has been widely adopted in botany to refer to one of the two largest clades of angiosperms (constituting over 70% of angiosperm species), monocots being the other. The remaining angiosperms are sometimes referred to as basal angiosperms or paleodicots but these terms have not been widely or consistently adopted as they do not refer to a monophyletic group.

Members of the group have grooved pollen, or forms derived from it. These pollen have three or more pores set in furrows called colpi. In contrast, most of the other seed plants (that is the gymnosperms, the monocots and the paleodicots) produce monosulcate pollen, with a single pore set in a differently oriented groove called the sulcus. The name "tricolpates" is preferred by some botanists in order to avoid confusion with the dicots, a non-monophyletic group (Judd & Olmstead 2004).

Numerous familiar plants are eudicots, including many common food plants, trees, and ornamentals. Some common and familiar eudicots include members of the sunflower family such as the common dandelion, the forget-me-not, cabbage and other members of its family, apple, buttercup, maple and macadamia. Most leafy trees of mid-latitudes also belong to eudicots, with notable exceptions being magnolias and tulip trees which belong to magnoliids, and Ginkgo biloba which is not an angiosperm.