Cathaya roseltii SCHNEIDER

Dedicated in memory of the late FrantiŠek Holý (1935 - 1984), an eminent Czech palaeobotanist, Holý, František, Kvaček, Zlatko & Teodoridis, Vasilis, 2012, A Review Of The Early Miocene Mastixioid Flora Of The Kristina Mine At Hrádek Nad Nisou In North Bohemia (The Czech Republic), Acta Musei Nationalis Pragae Series B 68 (3 - 4), pp. 53-118 : 57

Cathaya roseltii SCHNEIDER

Pl. 1, fig. 5, pl. 10, fig. 5

1981

2005

Cathaya roseltii SCHNEIDER , p. 889, pls 1-2, text-fig.1 a-e (Bluno at Spremberg).

Cathaya roseltii SCHNEIDER ; Kunzmann and Mai, p. 82, pl. 3, figs 1-7 (Wiesa).

Needle fragments 1.5–1.9 mm wide, up to 19 mm long, incompletely preserved in length, margins entire, slightly revolute, midrib straight, strong, adaxially with a shallow groove, abaxially with a prominent keel, epidermis only slightly cutinized, exhibiting very narrow and elongate non-modified cells with straight anticlines, leaves hypostomatic, stomata in two bands containing 5–7 very regularly disposed 55–60 µm wide rows of densely set stomata without rows of non-modified cells. Stomata longitudinally oriented, monocyclic, with lateral subsidiary cells elongate, little different from non-modified cells, and two polar subsidiary cells relatively elongate, often shared by adjacent stomata.

D i s c u s s i o n: Kvaček (1966) assigned these fossils to Pseudotsuga on account of the stomatal arrangement (monocyclic, densely set stomata in longitudinal rows). At that time, he was unaware of the relict conifer genus Cathaya living in China whose foliage matches with fossils as correctly recognized by Schneider (1981) and differs from Pseudotsuga by homogenous stomatal bands without rows of non-modified cells ( Kunzmann and Mai 2005). The fossil needles from the Kristina Mine perfectly match similar fossils from Wiesa, which were assigned to Cathaya by Kunzmann and Mai (2005) and compared with the living Cathaya argyrophylla CHUN et KUANG from Central China. C. schneideriana was also recorded in the mastixioid flora of Arjuzanx in western France ( Kvaček et al. 2011).

M a t e r i a l: Fragmentary isolated needles on slides, G 8872a-c, 8873a-d (KR 103A, B).

Pinus L.