Are Roses Related To Apples and Pears?
Due to the branching nature of evolution, all living things are related to each other. However, living things can vary in their relativeness to each other. Apples and pears are probably more related to each other than apples and roses. Apple trees, Plant trees, and rose bushes are all flowering plants and are thus related under the Angiosperms phylum. I’m not exactly sure where exactly the two split off into different branches of the evolutionary tree but I hope this helps.
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Ok I get it
Both roses and apples are in the same plant family: Rosaceae.
However Roses are in subfamily Rosoideae along with their closer relatives of strawberries, black berries and rasberries, while apples are in the subfamily Amygdaloideae along with pears, plums, peaches, cherries, almonds, apricots, and quinces.
So you could say roses are more closely related to apples than to a lily or a watermelon.
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Kk got it
In some sense, I think that you “got” it even sooner, though you may not have realized it. Am I right that the question was because apple blossoms look a lot like wild rose blossoms? And that rose hips seem more like apples than like soft berries, despite the relative sizes?
This kind of careful observation is so important to understanding nature. Good job.
Evolutionary biologists use the term synapomorphy to refer to traits that two species share in common because they both inherited it from a common ancestor. Synapomorphies are often clues to relationships among different kinds of organisms.
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Yes, because these three genera are part of the same botanical family.
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