100 million years of Lauraceae forest evolution: taxonomy, systematics and ecology

International audienceThe living Lauraceae are interpreted as a basal angiosperm family in recent phylogenies. Today 2,500 species of Lauraceae are known of which the majority is the subfamilies Laureae and Perseae (1,700 species) distributed in tropical and warm temperate zones worldwide. Although living angiosperm systematics is based on flowers, the rarity of fertile individuals in tropical forests makes leaves frequently used to determine species. It is the same in the fossil record, and their early evolution and radiation can be followed. In North America, they already existed during the Albian (von Balthazar et al. 2007). In Europe, they formed the earliest known angiosperm forests by the Cenomanian, and played a key role in the tree habit of angiosperms (Coiffard et al., 2006). Especially, the group was quite diversified in the Bohemian Massif with wood and many types of leaves and inflorescences (Eklund and Kvaček, 1998; Kvaček and Eklund, 2003)