Over the last several years, research in my lab has focused on the genus Pelargonium, a plant lineage that has radiated mostly within the last 10 million years across the highly heterogeneous landscape of Southern Africa and beyond.  For a single genus, variation in growth forms in Pelargonium is astounding while variation in leaf shape is just as impressive.  We want to understand some of the functional consequences of this variation and to interpret this variation in an evolutionary context. We have taken a variety of approaches ranging from comparative ecophysiology of co-occurring species to surveys of trait diversity across South Africa. One next step is considering leaf traits in the context of whole plant morphology.