Bambusa

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 : 221-223

“ Bambusa ” cf. lugdunensis SAPORTA, 1869

Text-fig. 2f, h

1869 Bambusa lugdunensis SAPORTA , p. 760.

1876 Bambusa lugdunensis SAPORTA ; Saporta and Marion, p. 224, pl. 23, figs 8–16.

M a t e r i a l. Oriolo MSF 651, 651-1, 970, 973, n.n.,

Tebano MSF n.n.

D e s c r i p t i o n. Axis leafy, dispersed leaves, leaves alternate, petiolate, pseudopetiole <1 mm long, lamina base constricted, apex elongate acute, lamina 40–50 mm long, 6–10 mm wide, venation parallelodromous, midvein more prominent than lateral veins.

R e m a r k s. Bambusa lugdunensis was described from Pliocene strata of Meximieux by Saporta (1869). The leaves of this fossil-species are known mainly from the Pliocene of southern France ( Saporta 1869, Saporta and Marion 1876, Boulay 1892, Laurent 1904 –1905), and they occur rarely in Upper Miocene and Pliocene deposits of Northwestern Italy ( Martinetto 2003, Teodoridis et al. 2015). Comparable leaves, lacking genus diagnostic features, have been described from several Miocene localities across Europe (Berger and Zaubusch 1953, Grangeon 1958, Worobiec and Worobiec 2005), and from the Pliocene of Abkhazia ( Georgia; Kolakovskii 1964).

We follow Worobiec and Worobiec (2005) in using the genus name “ Bambusa ” with quotation marks, indicating that assignment to a particular genus is difficult (see Text-fig. 2g for an example of a modern bamboo in tribe Arundinarieae ). We tentatively assign the leaf remains from Oriolo to tribe Arundinarieae , the temperate woody bamboos (North Temperate clade; Bamboo Phylogeny Group 2012).

Figures

Text-fig. 2. a, b: Pinus aff. peuce cones. a: Oriolo, MSF 643. b: Tebano, MSF 1021. c: Abies aff. alba cone scale, Oriolo MSF 988. d, e: Tsuga chiarugii cones. d: Oriolo MSF 638. e: Oriolo MSF 979. f, h: Bambusa lugdunensis leaves and leafy axis. f: Oriolo MSF 937. h: Oriolo MSF 651. g: Modern leaf of Yushania for comparison (NMNS Cleared Leaf Database specimen U1347). i: Phragmites sp. Oriolo MSF n.n. Scale bars 50 mm (a, b, h, i), 10 mm (c–g).