Corylus aff. avellana

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 : 236

Corylus aff. avellana L., 1753

Text-fig. 9k–o

M a t e r i a l. Oriolo MSF 639, 643, 644, 653, 838, 840,

841, 1000, 1001, 1003, 1022.

D e s c r i p t i o n. Leaf, fruit; leaf, simple, petiolate, lamina broad elliptic to round, 37–50 mm long, 34–43 mm wide, base cordate, apex obtuse, secondary venation craspedodromous, secondary veins with prominent abmedial veins, margin shallowly lobed, serrate; secondary, abmedial and small higher order veins departing from tertiary veins entering teeth, teeth with short convex basal and apical side; fruit is a nut, 10–15 mm long, 10 mm wide.

R e m a r k s. The small size of the leaves may indicate that Corylus was part of the drier hinterland, possibly of a Šibljak type (deciduous scrub in submediterranean vegetation of southeastern Europe; Adamovic 1909). Specimen MSF 644 is on a slab with a leaf of Berberis . Fossil fruits of C. avellana occur in several Pliocene and Pleistocene sites of Italy (Martinetto 2015).

Figures

Text-fig. 9. a–e: Carya aff. minor. a: Terminal leaflet, Oriolo MSF 755. b: Oriolo MSF 755. c: Oriolo MSF 766. d: Oriolo MSF 768. e: Oriolo MSF 635. f, g: Pterocarya aff. fraxinifolia. f: Fruit, Oriolo MSF 632. g: Leaflet, Oriolo MSF 632a. h–j: Alnus aff. glutinosa subsp. barbata. h: Oriolo MSF 852. i: Oriolo MSF 850. j: Seed cone, Oriolo MSF 987. k–o: Corylus aff. avellana. k: Leaf, Oriolo MSF 841. l: Fruit, Oriolo MSF 1001. m: Fruit, Oriolo MSF 1022. n: Fruit, Oriolo MSF 1003. o: Fruit, Oriolo MSF 1022. Scale bars 50 mm (a–e, g–i), 10 mm (f, j–o).