Lithocarpus

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"Stone oak" redirects here. For the district of San Antonio, Texas, USA, see Stone Oak, San Antonio.

Lithocarpus
Temporal range: Eocene–Recent
Lithocarpus edulis, Kantō region, Japan
Scientific classification Edit this classification
Kingdom: Plantae
Clade: Tracheophytes
Clade: Angiosperms
Clade: Eudicots
Clade: Rosids
Order: Fagales
Family: Fagaceae
Subfamily:
Quercoideae
Genus: Lithocarpus
Blume
Species

See text

Diversity
c. 340 species
Synonyms

Pasania Oerst.

MHNT
MHNT

Lithocarpus is a genus in the

Wallace's Line and reaching Papua. In general, these trees are most dominant in the uplands (more than 1,000 m or 3,300 ft above sea level) and have many ecological similarities to the Dipterocarpaceae, the dominant lowland tree group.[3] These trees are intolerant of seasonal droughts, not being found on the Lesser Sunda Islands, despite their ability to cross numerous water barriers to reach Papua.[4][5]

The North American

tanoak or tanbark oak (Notholithocarpus densiflorus) was previously included in this genus but recent evidence indicates the similarities in flower and fruit morphology are due to convergent evolution. Both genetic and morphological evidence demonstrate that the tanoak is a distant relative to Asian stone oaks and, therefore tanoak has been moved into a new genus, Notholithocarpus.[6]

Lithocarpus trees are

lignified and hard, lending greater mechanical protection to the seed,[7] creating a novel type of fruit.[8] The kernel is edible in some species (e.g. Lithocarpus edulis
), but inedible, and very bitter, in others.

Several of the species are very attractive ornamental trees, used in parks and large gardens in warm temperate and subtropical areas.

Classification

In 1948,

Aimee Camus produced a comprehensive treatment of the two major genera in the family,[9]
given the specimens available to her at the Natural History Museum in Paris. Because of the many collections available from the French colonies in subtropical and tropical Indochina, she worked extensively with stone oaks from the region. Most importantly, she provided the only existing infrageneric structure within the genus but unfortunately, many of the species from the Malesian region, south of the Isthmus of Kra, are not incorporated into this system.

Her classification system included 13 subgenera, including the subgenus Pasania which is by far the largest division within the genus. About 100 Asian species were treated separately in Pasania, at the genus level, and occasionally the old name persists on some herbarium sheets that have not been annotated. Several of the other subgenera possess fewer than ten species and have distinctive morphologies. Few of the Malesian species are treated in Camus' system and Soepadmo, who wrote the Flora Malesiana treatment,[10][11] made no attempt to update or integrate these species into Camus' system, therefore a lot of work obviously remains to be done. Camus' system was highly detailed, as three levels of organization are recognized below the subgenus, but the classification is not systematic at the lowest level.

List of subgenera (No. of species in Camus' treatment): Castanicarpus (1); Corylopasania (2); Cryptostylis (1); Cyclobalanus (58); Cyrtobalanus (1); Eulithocarpus (11); Gymnobalanus (10); Liebmannia (3); Oerstedia (1); Pachybalanus (14); Pasania (209); Pseudosynaedrys (9); Synaedrys (15); indeterminate (12).

Early researchers into the family often suggested that the stone oaks were primitive in the family. An exhaustive study of the inflorescence and fruits of 73 species from eight of Camus' subgenera found that important development and evolutionary characters distinguish the major groups in the genus and indicate differences among the genera of the family.

Species

Main article: List of Lithocarpus species
Lithocarpus pseudoreinwardtii
Lithocarpus hancei

References

  1. ^ Strijk, J.S. (September 4, 2018). "Lithocarpus - On: asianfagaceae.com – The complete database for information on the evolutionary history, diversity, identification and conservation of over 700 Species of Asian trees". Asian Fagaceae. Retrieved May 4, 2021.
  2. ISSN 2296-701X
    .
  3. doi:10.1146/annurev.es.19.110188.002023
    .
  4. S2CID 86444402
    . Retrieved 2020-03-23.
  5. PMID 32442164
    .
  6. S2CID 85671229. Archived from the original
    (PDF) on 2017-03-20. Retrieved 2014-03-05.
  7. PMID 22457722
    .
  8. doi:10.1006/bojl.1999.0325
    . Retrieved 2020-03-20.
  9. OCLC 496212700
    .
  10. OCLC 475354541
    .
  11. OCLC 8642966464
    .

External links

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