Few islands of the world have received as much attention for evolutionary patterns and processes as the Hawaiian Islands. Reading through Sherwin Carlquist's stimulating Hawaii: A Natural History (1970) always elevates our interest. We have also read about fascinating evolutionary phenomena in picture-wing Drosophila, studied so successfully by Hampton Carson and colleagues (e.g., Carson & Kaneshiro, 1976; Kaneshiro, Gillespie & Carson, 1995; DeSalle, 1995). It is fitting, therefore, that the initial two chapters of this book deal with the Hawaiian Islands. Recent studies have greatly increased our understanding of patterns and processes in the endemic vascular plant flora of the Hawaiian Islands. A monumental achievement was the publication of the two-volume Manual of the Flowering Plants of Hawaii (Wagner, Herbst & Sohmer, 1990) that established for the first time a consistent species concept for the entire archipelago. In the past, some taxa had been split into numerous microspecies and others had been treated broadly, depending upon the perspective of the particular taxonomist. These disparate treatments of plant diversity in the archipelago made it very difficult to approach questions of speciation and biogeography. In fact, publication of the new Manual made it possible to conceive and execute a very meaningful project on biogeography in the archipelago, involving both plants and animals (Wagner & Funk, 1995). This would have been impossible without the consistent foundation of species concepts provided by the flora project.