Cunoniaceae

Abstract: In this study, data from fossil macrofloras and microfloras in southeastern Australia are used to reconstruct vegetation and climates for the early Paleogene. Our data show that for much of the late Paleocene to middle Eocene, complex, species-rich forests were predominant in southeastern Australia, under mesothermal humid climates (mean annual temperature 16-22 °C, coldest quarter mean temperature >10 °C, mean annual precipitation >150 cm/yr). A minor cooling episode may have occurred in the mid-early Eocene. Megathermal climates may have been present in lowlands in the latest early Eocene, during the Cenozoic Global Climatic Optimum. These forests were dominated by taxa characteristic of present-day mesothermal-megathermal high-rainfall multistratal forests; e.g., Cunoniaceae, Elaeocarpaceae, Gymnostoma (Casuarinaceae), Lauraceae (e.g., Beilschmiedia, Cryptocarya and Endiandra), and Proteaceae. A prominent treefern element (Cyathea and Dicksonia types) was present in the early Eocene. A number of megathermal taxa, including Cupanieae (Sapindaceae) and Ilex (Aquifoliaceae), were present through the early and middle Eocene. Taxa characteristic of modern-day microthermal to mesothermal forests were also present, e.g., Nothofagus (Nothofagaceae), Eucryphia (Eucryphiaceae), Libocedrus (Cupressaceae) and Podocarpaceae (Acmopyle and Dacrycarpus). The relictual araucarian conifer, Wollemia, and other Araucariaceae were present through the late Paleocene to early Eocene. There is limited physiognomic evidence to suggest the late Paleocene to early Eocene forests contained some deciduous canopy trees.

Abstract: The Oligocene vegetation at Pioneer was closed temperate rainforest dominated by Nothofagus johnstonii Hill, which probably produced N. menziesii-type pollen. However, other angiosperms (Quintinia, Cupaniae, Ilex, Cunoniaceae, Myrtaceae, Proteaceae and Winteraceae) were also present, as well as several conifers (Athrotaxis, Phyllocladus, Podocarpus, Dacrydium, Dacrycarpus and Araucariaceae). This rainforest was floristically more complex that the modern Tasmanian Nothofagus cunninghamii rainforests but contained many taxonomically related elements. One major difference was that a fern similar to extant Cyathea filled the riparian niche now largely occupied by the tree-fern Dicksonia antarctica. There is indirect evidence that species producing Nothofagus brassii-type pollen may have occurred upstream of the site of deposition, suggesting that the Nothofagus species were altitudinally zoned or edaphically restricted. The current absence of many of these Nothofagus species in Tasmania may be due to their in...

Abstract: A phylogeny and revised classification of the flowering plant family Cunoniaceae and related taxa is presented. Parsimony cladistic analyses, including bootstrap and decay analyses, of chloroplast DNA sequences from two loci, trnL-trnF and rbcL, and morphology show that three genera often placed in their own families, Bauera, Davidsonia, and Eucryphia, are nested within Cunoniaceae. Brunellia may be most closely related to the Australian pitcher plant Cephalotus, and Aphanopetalum is in Saxifragales. Within Cunoniaceae, the New Guinean-South Pacific genera Acsmithia and Spiraeanthemum form a sister clade to the rest of family. Within this larger clade is a basal grade in which flowers mature centrifugally on an inflorescence axis, and a clade in which flowers mature synchronously to acropetally on an inflorescence axis. Other conspicuous morphological characters, including stipule position, inflorescence form, petal presence or absence, number of pollen colpi, carpel number, and fruit morphology,...