AbstractIn order to develop classification guidelines for the Cycadales, a workshop was held in April 2002, at Montgomery Botanical Center in Miami, Florida, USA. Fourteen internationally-renowned cycad systematists spent 3 days identifying and developing guidelines that would provide a stable, practical and informative classification scheme for cycads. The participants agreed that convening such a workshop was vital, timely and necessary to produce a universally accepted evolutionary classification for the Cycadales in the near future. Before developing the guidelines, the participants first needed to identify the assumptions, or beliefs, that they hold to be true about cycad classification. These beliefs are presented under three categories: (i) beliefs about biological relationships; (ii) beliefs about what systematists can and should do in order to understand biological relationships; and (iii) beliefs about what cycad systematists can and should do in order to understand relationships in the Cycadales.