Angiosperms distinguished by tending to have in their leaves, flower found in multiples of four or five, presence of a , etc.

The dicots also can be distinguished from monocots in terms of the morphology of their vascular tissues as well as their pollen grains that is in addition to possessing two cotyledon.

The dicots, as traditionally defined, do not form a clade but instead are a paraphyletic taxon. The double cotyledon of the dicots thus cannot be viewed as a shared derived character except, perhaps, in terms of the angiosperrms as a whole. Most extant dicots, however, do together form a clade, one that is referred to as the .