This analysis goes beyond many phylogenies in exploring how phylogenetic structure imposed by morphology, ecology, and geography reveals useful evolutionary data. A comprehensive range of such diversity is evaluated within tribe Indigofereae and outgroups from sister tribes. A combined data set of 321 taxa (over one-third of the tribe) by 80 morphological characters, 833 aligned nuclear ribosomal ITS/5.8S sites, and an indel data set of 33 characters was subjected to parsimony analysis. Notable re-sults include the Madagascan dry forest  Disynstemon  resolved as sister to tribe Indigofereae, and all species of the large genus Indigofera  comprise just four main clades, each diagnosable by morphological synapomorphies and ecological and geographical predilections. These results suggest niche conservation (ecology) and dispersal limitation (geography)  are  important  processes  rendering signature shapes to the Indigofereae phylogeny in different biomes. Clades confi ned to temperate and succulent-rich biomes  are  more  dispersal  limited  and  have  more  geographical  phylogenetic  structure  than  those  inhabiting  tropical  grass-rich  vegetation. The African arid corridor, particularly the Namib center of endemism, harbors many of the oldest  Indigofera   lineages. A rates analysis of nucleotide substitutions confi rms that the ages of the oldest crown clades are mostly younger than 16 Ma, im-plicating dispersal in explaining the worldwide distribution of the tribe.   Key words: biogeography, character evolution, dispersal limitation, Fabaceae,  Indigofera, Indigofereae, Leguminosae, mo-lecular phylogeny, rates analysis.