Hydraulic properties control plant responses to climate and are likely to be under strong selective pressure, but their macro-evolutionary history remains poorly characterized. We compiled a global dataset of hydraulic traits describing xylem efficiency, xylem safety, sapwood allocation relative to leaf area and drought exposure and matched it with a newly derived genus-level phylogeny to shed light on woody-plant hydraulic eco-evolutionary patterns. All hydraulic traits present medium to high levels of phylogenetic signal, being evolutionarily segregated into two phylogenetically conserved adaptive modules: the safety-exposure coordination, whereby lineages exposed to drought adapted to withstand low water potentials by evolving a xylem with higher embolism resistance; and the efficiency-allocation coordination, whereby higher water availability and deeper, water-retentive soils led to the evolution of hydraulically efficient species with higher leaf area relative to sapwood area. Moreover, the lack of evolutionary correlation between xylem safety and efficiency suggest that both adaptive modules are independent.