FAGUS DOGEI WHEELER & MANCHESTER, 2021 FIG. 8A–K We found five samples that have a combination of features indicating affinity with Fagus. There is variation in vessel frequency, ray size, and occurrence of compound rays. The abundant tyloses in some samples made it difficult to measure vessel element lengths and to clearly see perforation plates. A description of the features they share is given below. Table 2 gives information on each sample’s vessel diameter and frequency, and ray width and height. Description— Growth rings distinct, marked by radially flattened latewood fibers, and differences in vessel diameter between latewood and earlywood of subsequent rings (Fig. 8A, B). Diffuse porous to semi-ring porous (Fig. 8A, B). Vessels predominantly solitary (Fig. 8B); vessels circular to oval to slightly angular in outline; vessels narrow. Perforation plates simple and scalariform with 8-seriate) is higher in Fagus than in Platanus, e.g., we observed ~9: 1 in F. grandifolia and ~2: 1 in Platanus occidentalis L. (1753). Comparisons with fossil woods— The nearby Post Hammer locality (UF 279) has two samples of beech wood, both assigned to Fagus dodgei Wheeler and Manchester (2021) and which differed from the mid-Miocene F.manosii Wheeler and Dillhoff (2009) from the Vantage Fossil Forests of Washington State which has more scalariform intervessel pitting and shorter rays. Compound rays were not observed in F.manosii. We assign the Dietz Hill (UF 278) woods to F. dodgei; differences between these UF 278 samples and F. dodgei from the Post Hammer locality are comparable to the intraspecific variation seen within present-day F. grandifolia and F. orientalis. The oldest well-documented occurrence of the beech genus is F. langevinii Manchester and Dillhoff (2004) from the early middle Eocene McAbee flora of British Colombia, based on cupules, nuts, foliage, and associated dispersed pollen, which was considered closest to the Fagus group that includes F.grandifolia (Manchester and Dillhoff 2005). Other Cenozoic North America Fagus megafossil occurrences include F.pacifica Chaney (1925) from the Oligocene Bridge Creek flora of Oregon (cupules and leaves; Chaney 1927, Meyer and Manchester1997), F. idahoensis Chaney and Axelrod (1959), and F.washoensis LaMotte (1936) from the Miocene of Idaho and Oregon (Chaney and Axelrod 1959). The Eurasian fossil record of Fagus based on leaves and cupules, has been reviewed previously (Kvacek and Walther 1991, Tanai 1974, Denk et al 2002). The tricolporate pollen of Fagus, which is distinctive in its ornamentation as viewed in SEM, has been recognized in the Paleocene of Greenland (Grimsson et al 2016), early Eocene of China (Hofmann et al. 2019) and various sites in the Miocene of Europe (e.g., Denk and Bouchal 2021). Today, F. grandifolia is North America’s only species of Fagus. It has an extensive range in the eastern half of the continent. Renner et al. (2016) reviewed the biogeographic history of the genus. They proposed that there was a Pacific-North American lineage that diverged from a Eurasian lineage by the Middle Eocene. The beech woods from UF 278 and UF 279 are likely part of that Pacific-North American lineage.

Published as part of Wheeler, Elisabeth A., Manchester, Steven R. & Baas, Pieter, 2023, A late Eocene wood assemblage from the Crooked River Basin, Oregon, USA, pp. 1-55 in PaleoBios 40 (14) on pages 15-18, DOI: 10.5070/P9401462457, http://zenodo.org/record/10913330