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Issue: Vol. 219 No. 2: 8 July 2105
Type: Article
Published: 2015-07-08
DOI: 10.11646/phytotaxa.219.2.1
Page range: 101–117
Abstract views: 30
PDF downloaded: 2

Recognizing the species of Thuja (Cupressaceae) based on their cone and foliage morphology

State Key Laboratory of Systematic and Evolutionary Botany, Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100093, China University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100039, China
State Key Laboratory of Systematic and Evolutionary Botany, Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100093, China University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100039, China
State Key Laboratory of Systematic and Evolutionary Botany, Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100093, China
State Key Laboratory of Systematic and Evolutionary Botany, Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100093, China Department of Palaeontology, University of Vienna, Althanstrasse 14, A-1090 Vienna, Austria
State Key Laboratory of Systematic and Evolutionary Botany, Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100093, China
Beijing Museum of Natural History, Beijing 100050, China
State Key Laboratory of Systematic and Evolutionary Botany, Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100093, China
Cone Foliage East Asia-North America disjunction Species identification Thuja Eudicots East Asia North America

Abstract

Thuja, with 5 extant species, exhibiting a disjunctive distribution between East Asia (3 species) and North America (2 species), was investigated with respect to the morphological characters of foliage and cones by LM and SEM. Here we provide 2 keys to all 5 species of Thuja based on the cones and foliage respectively, which not  only can be used for identifying extant Thuja at the species level, but also have a great potential for recognizing and/or linking the fossil species to living ones, and further tracing the evolutionary history of the genus.