Monocots are one of the most diverse, ecologically dominant, and economically important of all plant lineages, and are directly or indirectly responsible for most of the human diet. I will discuss what we have learned about their broad-scale phylogeny over the past few years using powerful new genomic data, and then focus on resulting insights into the evolution, historical biogeography, and the drivers of species diversification in two of the largest families of monocots, the bromeliads (ca. 3300 spp) and the orchids (> 25000
spp).