Carpinus aff. betulus

Denk, Thomas, Sami, Marco, Teodoridis, Vasilis & Martinetto, Edoardo, 2022, The Late Early Pleistocene Flora Of Oriolo, Faenza (Italy): Assembly Of The Modern Forest Biome, Fossil Imprint 78 (1), pp. 217-262 : 234-236

Carpinus aff. betulus L., 1753

Text-fig. 10a, b

M a t e r i a l. Oriolo MSF 640-1, 642, 848, 851, 892,

893, 898, 985.

D e s c r i p t i o n. Leaf, fruit; leaf, simple, petiolate, petiole 7 mm, lamina ovate-elliptic, 33 to> 60 mm long, 20– 50 mm wide, base obtuse, apex acute, 11–12 densely spaced secondary veins, secondary venation craspedodromous, margin finely serrate; fruit subtended by a trilobate bract, central lobe oblong, 24 mm long, 6 mm wide, apex rounded, venation brochidodromous, margin entire, lateral lobes much shorter, 11 mm long.

R e m a r k s. Separate leaves, fruit-bracts and fruits assigned to C. betulus commonly occur in Italy since the Late Miocene. However, hundreds of fossil fruits that occur in several Pliocene and Pleistocene sites of Italy (Martinetto 2015) always show a smaller mean size than the extant fruit samples of C. betulus , so Martinetto (2015) suggested assigning them to their own subspecies.

Figures

Text-fig. 10. a, b: Carpinus aff. betulus. a: Leaves, Oriolo MSF 640. b: Fruit, Oriolo MSF 985. c–g: Carpinus aff. orientalis. c: Oriolo MSF 895. d: Oriolo MSF 899. e: Oriolo MSF 848. f: Fruit, Oriolo MSF 986. g: Fruit, Oriolo MSF 985. Scale bars 10 mm (a–g).