Fagus aff. sylvatica

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 : 232

Fagus aff. sylvatica L., 1753

Text-fig. 7g

M a t e r i a l. Oriolo MSF 648, n.n.

D e s c r i p t i o n. Leaf, simple, petiolate, petiole 9 mm long, lamina elliptic 54–60 mm long, 34–46 mm wide, broad elliptic, base and apex acute, secondary venation pseudocraspedodromous, number of secondary veins 6–8, tertiary veins perpendicular to secondary veins.

R e m a r k s. The two leaves are identical to modern leaves of Fagus sylvatica subsp. sylvatica populations typical of Central, southern and western Europe. Earlier Pliocene leaf assemblages of Fagus in Europe (e.g., northern Greece, Atalanti, Velitzelos et al. 2014; Northern Italy, Martinetto 2003; Frankfurt, Germany, Kvaček et al. 2020) show a mosaic of leaf morphological characteristics, like that found in the modern East Asian species F. pashanica C.C.YANG , F. longipetiolata SEEMEN , F. crenata BLUME , and the western Eurasian F. sylvatica s.l. The leaves from Oriolo fall within the morphological variability of the modern European species F. sylvatica s. str. This is in agreement with molecular studies, which suggest that the modern species Fagus sylvatica s. str. diverged from its sister populations in Asia Minor at ca. 800 ky BP ( Gömöry et al. 2018). Further genetic differentiation in Europe and the Balkans might have occurred even later, but these are not captured in the leaf morphology of modern populations.

Figures

Text-fig. 7. a–d: Zelkova zelkovifolia. a: Fruiting twig, Oriolo MSF 639. b: Oriolo MSF 685. c: Oriolo MSF 859. d: Oriolo MSF 947. e: Unknown leaf fragment resembling Lonicera nigra L., 1753, Oriolo MSF 859. f: Crataegus aff. monogyna Oriolo MSF 639-1. g: Fagus aff. sylvatica Oriolo MSF 648. Scale bars 10 mm (a–g).