In woody species with a long life span, the studies on inheritance of any trait may be very time consuming and laborious. Chloroplast DNA(cpDNA) has been a valuable tool in such studies since it has several unique features such as limited genome size and cytoplasmic inheritance. In the present study, cpDNAs from five different species of Populus (P. alba, P. glandulosa, P. alba x P. glandulosa, P. davidiana, and P. nigra), and Nicotiana tabacuna were compared with regard to restriction fragment length polymophism. The results showed that cpDNAs among the species were very conserved, although some polymorphisms were observed when the DNAs were digested with restriction enzyme EcoRI or KphI. The other enzymes (Bgl II, and PstI) tested produced identical restriction fragmentation pattern among the species. However, cpDNAs from all the five Populus species showed different restriction fragmentation pattern from that of tobacco with the four restriction enzymes tested. Southern hybridization with tobacco rbcL gene fragment as a probe also produced identical pattern among Populus species. The results indicate that cpDNAs in the genus are very well conserved during evolution.