‘Gradual’ vs ‘punctuated’ and ‘unidirectional’ (only lengthening) vs. ‘bidirectional’ (lengthenings and shortenings) modes of evolution are explanations that compete to explain adaptive changes of flower tube length in angiosperm. The nightshade genus Salpichroa Miers, with 21 species mostly growing in the tropical Andes of southern South America, has the opportune qualities of including nearly 15-fold inter-specific variation in corolla tube length, as well as one species that is a candidate for participating in evolutionary escalation with the longest-billed hummingbird, Ensifera ensifera. We reconstructed the phylogenetic relationships using five molecular markers, the two plastid markers trnD-trnT and trnL, and three nuclear markers, ITS and two COSII, and estimated divergence times of the genus in order to reconstruct the history of both corolla tube length and polli...