Deciphering the origin of flowering plants

Abstract Colorful flowers decorate our planet with their appealing forms, yet their enigmatic evolutionary origin and rapid early diversification have been regarded as the ‘Goldbach conjecture’ of paleobotany. Else Marie Friis is a prominent professor who in 1981 was the first to identify the small angiosperm flowers that changed our perception of ancestral flowers and opened up a new direction in the study of angiosperm evolution. As a foreign member of Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), Professor Friis helps strengthen the scholarly communication and cooperation between China and Europe, especially in paleobotany. NSR got the chance to talk to Professor Friis about her research and developments in this field during her last visit to China. Professor Zhonghe Zhou, a paleontologist at the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, CAS, joined the interview.