Dipteronia Temporal range: | |
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Dipteronia sinensis, Berlin Botanical Gardens | |
Cluster of winged seeds of Dipteronia sinensis | |
Scientific classification | |
Kingdom: | Plantae |
Clade: | Tracheophytes |
Clade: | Angiosperms |
Clade: | Eudicots |
Clade: | Rosids |
Order: | Sapindales |
Family: | Sapindaceae |
Subfamily: | Hippocastanoideae |
Genus: | Dipteronia Oliv. |
Species | |
Dipteronia is a genus with two living and one extinct species in the soapberry family Sapindaceae. The living species are native to central and southern China. The fossil species has been found in Middle Paleocene to Early Oligocene sediments of North America and China.
Older classifications segregated the maples (Acer) and Dipteronia into the family Aceraceae, however work by the Angiosperm Phylogeny Group (APG I onward) and related investigations [1] led to the subsuming of Acereae into Sapindaceae as the tribe Acereae. Dipteronia is considered to be the sister genus to Acer. [2]
They are deciduous flowering shrubs or small trees, reaching 10–15 m (33–49 ft) tall. The leaf arrangement is opposite and pinnate with between 7 - 15 leaflets on each leaf. [2] The inflorescences are paniculate, terminal or axillary. The flowers have five sepals and petals; staminate flowers have eight stamens, and bisexual flowers have a two-celled ovary. The fruit is a rounded samara containing two compressed nutlets, flat, encircled by a broad wing which turns from light green to red with ripening.
The name Dipteronia stems from the Greek "di-" (two, both) & "pteron" (wings), from the winged fruits with wings on both sides of the seed.[ citation needed ]
There are only two living species, Dipteronia sinensis and Dipteronia dyeriana ; both are endemic to mainland China. [3] Dipteronia dyeriana is listed by the IUCN as being a "Red List" threatened species, and known from only five isolated populations in south-eastern Yunnan Province. [3]
The extinct species Dipteronia brownii is known from Middle Paleocene to Early Oligocene sites across western North America. The oldest fossils are found in the Fort Union Formation of Wyoming and the Tsagayan Formation of Northeastern coastal Russia. [4] In the Early Eocene the species expanded northward to the Eocene Okanagan Highlands sites such as the Klondike Mountain Formation of Washington, Driftwood Shales and Tranquille Formation of British Columbia as well as into the John Day Formation of central Oregon. During the middle to late Eocene the species spread east and south to the Ruby Basin Flora of Montana and the Florissant Formation of Colorado, while the last occurrences are in the Early Oligocene, Rupelian [5] of the Bridge Creek Flora in the upper John Day Formation. [2] Concurrently, several Dipteronia brownii fruits have also been collected from Rupelian 32 ± 1 million years ago lacustrine mudstones in Chuxiong Yi Autonomous Prefecture southwestern China. [6]
Archaeus is an extinct genus of marine jackfish from the Paleogene of Europe, where it inhabited the former Tethys Ocean. The oldest species, A. oblongus is from the early Ypresian epoch of Eocene Turkmenistan, and the last species, A. glarisianus and A. solus, are from the early to middle Rupelian, of the Matt Formation of Canton Glarus, Switzerland and the Pshekha Formation of North Caucasus, Russia.
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Dipteronia sinensis is a plant species in the genus Dipteronia, endemic to mainland China, and regarded in the soapberry family Sapindaceae sensu lato after Angiosperm Phylogeny Group and more recently ), or traditionally by several authors in Aceraceae, related to the maples.
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This article contains papers in paleobotany that were published in 2016.
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This article records new taxa of plants that are scheduled to be described during the year 2018, as well as other significant discoveries and events related to paleobotany that occurred in the year 2018.
This article records new taxa of plants that were described during the year 2014, as well as other significant discoveries and events related to paleobotany that occurred in the year 2014.
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Comptonia columbiana is an extinct species of sweet fern in the flowering plant family Myricaceae. The species is known from fossil leaves found in the early Eocene deposits of central to southern British Columbia, Canada, plus northern Washington state, United States, and, tentatively, the late Eocene of Southern Idaho and Earliest Oligocene of Oregon, United States.
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Media related to Dipteronia at Wikimedia Commons