Abstract: With the advent of new methods and techniques, floral development has been ex tensively studied in many groups of angiosperms recently. These studies have resulted in notable progress and greatly increased our knowledge about the diversity of floral structure and developmental patterns as well as phylogenetic relationship of angiosperms. This field is be coming an active and exciting one in systematics of flowering plants. The present paper re viewed this progress from four aspects: (1) the methods of studies on floral development; (2) floral development and the diversity of floral structure; (3) floral development and phylogeny of angiosperms; (4) molecular genetics of floral development. In addition, several future directions and some problems needing attention in this field are discussed: (1) extensive studies on floral developmental studies of extensive species of angiosperms and comparison of floral structures among them; (2) research of floral development of homeotic flowers as well as their systematic and evolutionary value; (3) floral structure should be studied from the viewpoint of dynamics, because the structure of plants can be seen as a spatio-temporal pro- cess, and the use of structural categories in systematics may distort the natural dynamics.

Key words: Angiosperms, Floral development, Phylogeny