The Lamiales comprise about 20 families with approximately 18000 species. The relationships of the carnivorous families (Lentibulariaceae, Byblidaceae) remained uncertain in previous phylogenetic analyses and so did the evolution of characters being part of the carnivorous syndrome. Also, the question of how many times carnivory evolved in the Lamiales remained unanswered. To address these issues, we sequenced the matK gene and the noncoding parts of the trnK intron (about 2700 bp) of nearly 100 species representing all major groups of the Lamiales with an emphasis on both the taxa with accepted carnivory and taxa with presumed preadaptations (e.g., Martyniaceae). In the trees obtained from parsimony analyses, the deeper nodes that show the branching order of the major groups receive low statistical support due to short branches. This is a phenomenon also found in all previous studies using other molecular datasets. However, Oleaceae are resolved as sister to all other Lamiales with high statistical support and in addition are characterized by several long insertions. The monophyly of most of the included families is well supported statistically, with the exception of the non-monophyletic former Scrophulariaceae and Pedaliaceae. The data indicate that carnivory evolved independently in Lentibulariaceae and the other carnivorous taxa. Within the Lentibulariaceae the majority of nodes gain very high statistical support. Pinguicula is sister to a clade comprising Utricularia and Genlisea. The sequence variability of the matK coding region proved to be equally high as that of the adjacent intron parts. The transition/transversion ratios in both coding and noncoding sequences are close to 1.0. The variability of the 3rd codon position is only slightly higher than of 1st and 2nd positions. Within Lentibulariaceae Utricularia and Genlisea display a five times greater sequence variability than Pinguicula.

Key words: carnivory, Lamiales, Lentibulariaceae, matK