Dipteronia

Dipteronia is a genus of two living and one extinct[1] species, regarded in the soapberry family Sapindaceae sensu lato after Angiosperm Phylogeny Group (APG I 1998, APG II 2003) and more recently (Harrington et al. 2005) [2])or traditionally by several authors in Aceraceae, related to the maples.

Dipteronia
Fossil D. brownii samara
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Plantae
Clade: Tracheophytes
Clade: Angiosperms
Clade: Eudicots
Clade: Rosids
Order: Sapindales
Family: Sapindaceae
Subfamily: Hippocastanoideae
Genus: Dipteronia
Oliv.
Species
Dipteronia sinensis

They are deciduous flowering shrubs or small trees, reaching 10–15 m tall. The leaf arrangement is opposite and pinnate. The inflorescences are paniculate, terminal or axillary. The flowers have five sepals and petals; staminate flowers have eight stamens, and bisexual flowers have a two-celled ovary. The fruit is a rounded samara containing two compressed nutlets, flat, encircled by a broad wing which turns from light green to red with ripening.

The name Dipteronia stems from the Greek "di-" (two, both) & "pteron" (wings), from the winged fruits with wings on both sides of the seed.

There are only two living species, Dipteronia sinensis and Dipteronia dyeriana; both are endemic to mainland China. Dipteronia dyeriana is listed by the IUCN as being a "Red List" threatened species.

Fossil record

Dipteronia browni is an extinct species from the early Eocene Klondike Mountain Formation of Washington, and is also known from early Eocene sites in British Columbia Canada such as Driftwood Canyon Provincial Park and the McAbee Fossil Beds. Several fossil leaves and two winged fruits of Dipteronia brownii have also been collected from the early Oligocene (about 33.9 million to 23 million years ago) lacustrine mudstone layers near Lühe Town in Chuxiong Yi Autonomous Prefecture of Yunnan Province, southwestern China.[3]

Notes
  1. McClain, A. M.; Manchester, S. R. (2001). "Dipteronia (Sapindaceae) from the Tertiary of North America and implications for the phytogeographic history of the Aceroideae". American Journal of Botany. 88 (7): 1316–25. doi:10.2307/3558343. JSTOR 3558343. PMID 11454632.
  2. Harrington, M.G.; Edwards, K.J.; Johnson, S.A.; Chase, M.W.; Gadek, P.A. (2005). "Phylogenetic inference in Sapindaceae sensu lato using plastid matK and rbcL DNA sequences". Systematic Botany. 30 (2): 366–382. doi:10.1600/0363644054223549.
  3. An early Oligocene occurrence of the palaeoendemic genus Dipteronia (Sapindaceae) from Southwest China by Wen-Na Ding, Jian Huang, Tao Sua, Yao-Wu Xing and Zhe-Kun Zhou - Review of Palaeobotany and Palynology Volume 249, February 2018, Pages 16-23

References
  • Qiu, Ying-Xiong; Luo, Yu-Ping; Comes, Hans Peter; Ouyang, Zhi-Qin; Fu, Cheng-Xin (2007). "Population genetic diversity and structure of Dipteronia dyerana (Sapindaceae), a rare endemic from Yunnan Province, China, with implications for conservation". Taxon. 56 (2): 427–437. doi:10.1002/tax.562014.

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