Amentotaxus

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Amentotaxus
Temporal range: Middle Jurassic–Recent
Amentotaxus needles 01.jpg
Fossil Amentotaxus needles
Scientific classification OOjs UI icon edit-ltr.svg
Kingdom: Plantae
Clade: Tracheophytes
Clade: Gymnospermae
Division: Pinophyta
Class: Pinopsida
Order: Cupressales
Family: Taxaceae
Genus: Amentotaxus
Pilg.
Type species
Amentotaxus argotaenia
(Hance) Pilg.
Species
Amentotaxus formosana Amentotaxus formosana (Jardin des Plantes de Paris).jpg
Amentotaxus formosana

Amentotaxus is a genus of conifers (catkin-yews) comprising five species, treated in either the Cephalotaxaceae, or in the Taxaceae when that family is considered in a broad sense. The genus is endemic to subtropical Southeast Asia, from Taiwan west across southern China to Assam in the eastern Himalaya, and south to Vietnam. The species are evergreen shrubs and small trees reaching 2–15 m tall.

Contents

The leaves are spirally arranged on the shoots, but twisted at the base to lie in two flat ranks (except on erect leading shoots); they are linear-lanceolate, 4–12 cm long and 6–10 mm broad, soft in texture, with a blunt tip, green above, and with two conspicuous white stomatal bands below. They differ from the related genus Cephalotaxus in the broader leaves, and from Torreya by the blunt, not spine-tipped leaves.

The species can be either monoecious or dioecious; when monoecious, the male and female cones are often on different branches. The male (pollen) cones are catkin-like, 3–15 cm long, grouped in clusters of two to six together produced from a single bud. The female (seed) cones are single or grouped a few together on short stems; minute at first, they mature in about 18 months to a drupe-like structure with the single large nut-like seed 1.5–3 cm long surrounded by a fleshy covering, orange to red at full maturity; the apex of the seed usually protrudes slightly out of the fleshy covering.

The oldest fossils that are recognisable to the genus are from the Middle-Late Jurassic Daohugou Bed of China. [1]

Extant species

Phylogeny of Amentotaxus [2] [3]
Amentotaxus

A. formosana Li

A. argotaenia (Hance) Pilger

A. poilanei (Ferré & Rouane) Ferguson

ImageScientific nameCommon nameDistribution
Amentotaxus argotaenia 2.JPG Amentotaxus argotaenia Catkin yewChina: Fujian, southern Gansu, Guangdong, Guangxi, Guizhou, western Hubei, Hunan, Jiangsu, north-western Jiangxi, central and south-eastern Sichuan, south-eastern Tibet and southern Zhejiang
Amentotaxus assamica Assam catkin yewIndia
Amentotaxus formosana underside.jpg Amentotaxus formosana Taiwan catkin yewTaiwan
Amentotaxus hatuyenensis Vietnam
Amentotaxus poilanei Poilane's catkin yewVietnam
Amentotaxus yunnanensis - Lyman Plant House, Smith College - DSC04389.JPG Amentotaxus yunnanensis Yunnan catkin yewLaos, Vietnam, and Guizhou and Yunnan in China

References

  1. Dong, Chong; Shi, Gongle; Herrera, Fabiany; Wang, Yongdong; Herendeen, Patrick S; Crane, Peter R (2020-06-18). "Middle–Late Jurassic fossils from northeastern China reveal morphological stasis in the catkin-yew". National Science Review. 7 (11): 1765–1767. doi: 10.1093/nsr/nwaa138 . ISSN   2095-5138. PMC   8288717 . PMID   34691509.
  2. Stull, Gregory W.; Qu, Xiao-Jian; Parins-Fukuchi, Caroline; Yang, Ying-Ying; Yang, Jun-Bo; Yang, Zhi-Yun; Hu, Yi; Ma, Hong; Soltis, Pamela S.; Soltis, Douglas E.; Li, De-Zhu; Smith, Stephen A.; Yi, Ting-Shuang; et al. (2021). "Gene duplications and phylogenomic conflict underlie major pulses of phenotypic evolution in gymnosperms". Nature Plants. 7 (8): 1015–1025. bioRxiv   10.1101/2021.03.13.435279 . doi:10.1038/s41477-021-00964-4. PMID   34282286. S2CID   232282918.
  3. Stull, Gregory W.; et al. (2021). "main.dated.supermatrix.tree.T9.tre". Figshare. doi:10.6084/m9.figshare.14547354.v1.{{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)