Vittarioideae worthy of subgeneric rank, while "Rheopteris" had not yet been discovered. "Haplopteris" he explicitly synonymized with "Vittaria" in 1914. Carl Christensen used the name "Vittarioideae" in Verdoorn's "Manual of Pteridology" in 1938, but did not include a description, leaving it nomenclaturally invalid. Ren-Chang Ching raised Vittariaceae to the rank of a family in 1940. The first well-sampled molecular phylogenetic study of the vittarioids was based on the chloroplast gene rbcL. In this study, it was found that the type species of "Monogramma" is embedded in "Haplopteris"; the segregation of "Vaginularia" from "Monogramma" was also supported, as members of "Vaginularia" formed
Evolutionary history of plants repeatedly. While the form of early trees was similar to that of today's, the Spermatophytes or seed plants, the group that contain all modern trees, had yet to evolve. The dominant tree groups today are all seed plants, the gymnosperms, which include the coniferous trees, and the angiosperms, which contain all fruiting and flowering trees. No free-sporing trees like "Archaeopteris" exist in the extant flora. It was long thought that the angiosperms arose from within the gymnosperms, but recent molecular evidence suggests that their living representatives form two distinct groups. The molecular data has yet to be fully reconciled with