Flora of North America species comparison

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Lithocarpus
Habit Trees or shrubs, evergreen.
Leaves

blade leathery, margins entire or obscurely toothed to serrate, secondary veins unbranched, ± parallel, extending to margin.
Inflorescences

staminate and androgynous, axillary, often appearing terminal and branched by reduction of leaves, spicate, erect or ascending, rigid or flexible; androgynous inflorescences with pistillate cupules/flowers toward base and staminate flowers distally.
Staminate flowers

sepals distinct;

stamens 12(-18 or more) typically surrounding indurated pistillode covered with silky hairs.
Pistillate flower

1 per cupule;

sepals distinct;

carpels and styles 3.
Fruits

maturation in 2d year following pollination;

cupule cup-shaped, without any indication of valves, covering proximal portion of nut, scaly, spines absent, scales strongly reflexed, hooked at tip;

nut 1 per cupule, round in cross section, not winged.
Terminal

buds present, ovate, all scales imbricate.
x

= 12.

Lithocarpus
Distribution
from USDA
North America; e Asia
Discussion

Species 100-200 (1 in the flora).

Although fruit of Lithocarpus closely resembles that of Quercus, the two genera differ in characters of the inflorescence, flowers, and pollen. These characters indicate that Lithocarpus is more closely related to Castanea, Chrysolepis, and other Asian genera of subfamily Castaneoideae than to Quercus, and the similarity in fruit is because of convergence.

(Discussion copyrighted by Flora of North America; reprinted with permission.)
Source FNA vol. 3.
Parent taxa Fagaceae
Subordinate taxa
L. densiflorus
Name authority Blume: Bijdr. Fl. Ned. Ind. 10: 526. (1826)
Web links 
Unless otherwise noted, all data comes from the online version of the Flora of North America, who have made most of their content available via a Creative Commons license (CC BY 4.0).



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(If the plant you're looking for doesn't show up in the auto-complete list, that means it either isn't described in Flora of North America yet, or it's listed under a synonym. And please note that Flora of North America is still missing several plant families, including Apiaceae, Boraginaceae, and Polemoniaceae.)

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