Cunninghamioideae, QUINN, 2000

Martinetto, Edoardo, Bertini, Adele, Mantzouka, Dimitra, Natalicchio, Marcello, Niccolini, Gabriele & Kovar-Eder, Johanna, 2022, Remains Of A Subtropical Humid Forest In A Messinian Evaporitebearing Succession At Govone, Northwestern Italy - Preliminary Results, Fossil Imprint 78 (1), pp. 157-188 : 165

? Cunninghamioideae gen. et. sp. indet.

Pl. 5, Fig. 21

M a t e r i a l. Pollen grains of? Cunninghamioideae occur in all the analysed samples, usually in high quantity.

R e m a r k s. Formerly, Cunninghamioideae were included in Taxodiaceae , e.g., Page (1990). After a taxonomic reassessment ( Gadek et al. 2000, Farjon 2005), Cunninghamioideae and Taxodioideae are considered subfamilies of Cupressaceae .Pollen of Cunninghamia SCHREB. has been reported, e.g., from the Middle Miocene deposits of Lavanttal ( Austria; Grímsson and Zetter 2011), from Neogene deposits of Georgia (Transcaucasia) ( Shatilova et al. 2018). Macroremains have been described from the late Oligocene to Pliocene of Central Europe ( Kovar 1982, Walther 1989, 1999, Mai and Walther 1991), as well as from the Middle and Late Miocene of Romania ( Givulescu 1975). Light microscope studies of Cunninghamia pollen morphology were carried out by Jimbo (1933), Wodehouse (1935), Erdtman (1943, 1957), Ueno (1951), Van Campo-Duplan (1951); recently, Bouchal and Denk (2020) extensively described the pollen morphology of C. lanceolata (LAMB.) HOOK. under both the optical microscope and SEM. The abundant pollen grains from Govone do not show diagnostic features under the light microscope, despite having a morphology quite comparable to Cunninghamioideae . For an unquestionable attribution to this taxon, a SEM morphological study would be necessary, as recommended by Bouchal and Denk (2020).