Sequoia abietina

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 : 59

Sequoia abietina (BRONGNIART in CUVIER) E. KNOBLOCH

Pl. 1, fig. 3, pl. 4, figs 16-17, pl. 10, fig. 8

1822 Phyllites abietina BRONGNIART in CUVIER, p. 362, pl. 11, fig. 13 (Habichtswald).

1964 Sequoia abietina (BRONGNIART in CUVIER) E. KNOBLOCH, p. 601 (Habichtswald).

1977a Sequoia couttsiae HEER ; Holý, p. 111(Hrádek/N., Kristina Mine).

1978a Sequoia couttsiae HEER ; Holý, p. 2 (Hrádek/N., Kristina Mine).

2003 Sequoia abietina (BRONGNIART in CUVIER) E. KNOBLOCH; Teodoridis, p. 12, pl. 1, figs1, 2, 5-10, pl. 2, figs 1, 4-6, 10 (Hrádek/N., drill cores).

Twigs cupressoid and cryptomerioid besides taxodioid, bearing needle-like univeined helically and distichously arranged needles 1.5 mm wide and ca. 6 mm long, blunt at apex, hypostomatic, with amphicyclocytic stomata, mostly longitudinally orientated, in two abaxial bands per 4–5 rows, cupressoid particularly on twigs bearing seed cones, with shortly decurrent, helically arranged adpressed scale leaves. Stomata bicyclic to incompletely tricyclic, closely set and irregularly arranged, with narrow ca. 5 subsidiary cells, stomatal pit widely quadrangular. Seed cones globular to broadly ovoid, immature specimens 8–12 mm in size, bearing less than 20 helically arranged, peltate cone scales, bract scale area transversally narrow rhomboidal, irregularly radially wrinkled, with deeper cross ridge and a minute central mucro. Seeds flat, obliquely oval to sub-triangular, 2.5–3.4 mm long and 1.8–2.4 mm wide, rounded to truncate or shallowly subcordate at base, hilar scar sub-basal, transversal, slightly elongate, embryo straight to slightly curved (Kvaček 1966, p. 25, pl. 3, figs 11-12, pl. 5, fig. 6, as Sequoia sp. , Holý, 1975, p. 12, pl. 1, figs 7-15, as Sequoia couttsiae ).

D i s c u s s i o n: The cones of Sequoia abietina recovered from the Kristina Mine correspond clearly with those described from Upper Lusatia ( Mai 1964, as Sequoia langsdorfii, Czaja 2003 ) and differ significantly, contrary to the view of Holý (1975), from the records of Quasisequoia couttsiae (HEER) KUNZMANN from the Most Basin and other localities of this conifer ( Bůžek and Holý 1964, Kunzmann 1999) in its much narrower transversally elongated bract-scale area and mostly straight to indistinctly curved embryo contrary to mostly curved embryos in Quasisequoia couttsiae . However, seeds with straight and curved embryos occur together in one seed cone in both Sequoia abietina and Quasisequoia couttsiae ( Kunzmann 1999) as well as the modern representatives of Sequoia and Sequoiadendron (Teodoridis personal observation). Hence the generic differentiation on the basis of seeds is equvoval. Associated foliage with typically incompletely tricyclic amphicyclocytic stomata showing epidermal structure known from other sites of Sequoia abietina (see Kunzmann and Mai 2005) is also assignable to this conifer. We encountered similar problems when identifying all the twig fragments at hand due to the absence of leaf anatomy details as Kovar-Eder also in the case of the material from the Oberdorf Mine ( Kovar-Eder and Meller 2001).

Kunzmann (1999) in an extensive comparative study confirmed the affinity of this conifer distributed in the Cenozoic in Europe to the living S. sempervirens (D. DON) ENDLICHER distributed on the Pacific coast of North America. The carpological material described as Sequoia abietina (BRONGNIART in CUVIER) E. KNOBLOCH from drill cores Hr 39 and Hr 44 near Hrádek/N., belonging to the lower, middle and upper coal seams s. l. of the Zittau Basin ( Teodoridis 2003), can be assigned either to Sequoia ENDLICHER or Quasisequoia SHRINIVASAN et FRIIS. The morphological differences between seeds and cones of both taxa are well defined by Pingen (1994) and Kunzmann (1999).

M a t e r i a l: Compressions of leafy twigs, partly with attached seed cones, isolated seed cones and seeds, G 4593a, b, 4597, 8831-33, 8885a-b, 8886a.b, 8887-89 (KR 8, 269, 270), Gs 90-92.

Geinitziaceae KUNZMANN

Cupressospermum MAI emend. KUNZMANN