Morphological and chemical data from 64 genera of Parmeliaceae, including the most common genera in Europe, were analysed by means of neighbour–joining and parsimony analysis. Two presence/absence matrices were constructed, one for the 64 genera and a smaller one for the most common European genera. Probabilities were too low to allow grouping of the genera and only a few pairs of genera had a probability of >50% for both matrices. A molecular matrix (nuclear rDNA-ITS) of the most common genera in Europe was constructed and analysed by the method of maximum likelihood. These results were much more informative than the non-molecular matrix for establishing phylogenetic relationships among the genera.