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Charting the broad patterns of vascular plant evolution for Gondwana againstthe major global environmental shifts and events is attempted here for the first time. This is based on the analysis of the major vascular plant-bearing formations of the southern continents (plus India) correlated against the standard geological time-scale. Australia, followed closely by South America, are shown to yield by far the most complete sequences of productive strata. Ten seminal turnover pulses in the unfolding evolutionary picture are identified and seen to be linked to continental drift, climate change and mass global extinctions. The rise of vascular plants along the tropical belt, for instance, followed closely after the end-Ordovician warming and extinction. Equally remarkable is that the Late Devonian extinction may have caused both the terrestrialisation of the vertebrates and the origin of the true gymnosperms. The end-Permian …