The Palmophyllales are recently discovered and poorly understood deep-sea green algae that are phylogenetically close to the base of the green algal tree. An excellent new paper from Fred Leliaert looks at chloroplast genomic data from Verdigellas peltata (out of a specimen dredged up during the Deep Water Horizon oil spill) and places the organism in a strong phylogenetic context. Nature has a nice piece on the subject that quotes Brent Misher and myself.