Dated tree of 24,000 Angiosperms species incl Canary Island colonisation events

Insular woodiness (IW), referring to the evolutionary transition from
herbaceousness towards woodiness on islands, has arisen more than 30 times
on the Canary Islands (Atlantic Ocean). One of the IW hypotheses suggests
that drought has been a major driver of wood formation, but we do not know
in which palaeoclimatic conditions the insular woody lineages originated.
Therefore, we provided an updated review on the presence of IW on the
Canaries, reconstructed the palaeoclimate, and estimated the timing of
origin of woodiness of 24 insular woody lineages that represent a large
majority of the insular woody species diversity on the
Canaries. Our single, broad-scale dating analysis shows that
woodiness in 60-65% of the insular woody lineages studied originated
within the last 3.2 Myr during which Mediterranean seasonality (yearly
summer droughts) became established on the
Canaries. Consequently, our results are consistent with
palaeoclimatic aridification as a potential driver of woodiness in a
considerable proportion of the insular woody Canary Island lineages.
However, the observed pattern between insular woodiness and palaeodrought
during the last couple of million years could potentially have emerged as
a result of the typically young age of the native insular flora that is
characterised by a high turnover.