Betulaceae

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Betulaceae

Betulaceae, or the Birch Family, includes six genera of deciduous

Deciduous

Deciduous means falling off at maturity or tending to fall off and is typically used in reference to trees or shrubs that lose their leaves seasonally and to the shedding of other plant structures such as petals after flowering or fruit when ripe....
nut

Nut (fruit)

Nut is a general term for the large, dry, oily seed or fruit of some plant. While a wide variety of dried seeds and fruits are called nuts, only a certain number of them are considered by biologists to be true nuts....
-bearing tree

TREE

TREE was a Boston hardcore punk band formed in the summer of 1990. They were active in the Boston music scene until disbanding in 2002....
s and shrub

Shrub

A shrub or bush is a horticulture rather than strictly Botany category of woody plant, distinguished from a tree by its multiple stems and lower height, usually less than 5-6 m tall....
s, including the birch

Birch

Birch is the name of any tree of the genus Betula , in the family Betulaceae, closely related to the beech/oak family, Fagaceae....
es, alder

Alder

Alder is the common name of a genus of flowering plants belonging to the birch family . The genus comprises about 30 species of Plant sexuality trees and shrubs, few reaching large size, distributed throughout the North Temperate Zone and in the New World also along the Andes southwards to Argentina....
s, hazel

Hazel

The hazels are a genus of deciduous trees and large shrubs native to the temperate northern hemisphere. The genus is usually placed in the birch family Betulaceae, though some botanists split the hazels into a separate family Corylaceae.Hazel plants prefer a nice warm, mild,moist climate nothing more nothing less....
s, hornbeam

Hornbeam

Plants in the genus Carpinus are commonly called Hornbeams. They are relatively small hardwood trees. Many botanists place the hornbeams in the birch family Betulaceae, though some group them with the hazels and hop-hornbeams in a segregate family, Corylaceae....
s and hop-hornbeams, numbering about 130 species. They are mostly natives of the temperate Northern Hemisphere

Northern Hemisphere

The Northern Hemisphere is the half of a planet that is north of the equator?the word sphere literally means 'half sphere'. It is also that half of the celestial sphere north of the celestial equator....
, with a few species reaching the Southern Hemisphere

Southern Hemisphere

The Southern Hemisphere is the half of a planet that is south of the equator?the word sphere literally means 'half ball'. It is also that half of the celestial sphere south of the celestial equator....
in the Andes

Andes

The Andes form the world's longest exposed mountain range. They lie as a continuous chain of highland along the western coast of South America. The range is over 7,000 km long, 200-700 km wide , and of an average height of about 4,000 m ....
in South America

South America

South America is the southern continent of the Americas, situated entirely in the Western Hemisphere and mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere....
.

In the past, the family was often divided into two families, Betulaceae (Alnus, Betula) and Corylaceae (the rest); however, recent treatments, including the Angiosperm Phylogeny Group

Angiosperm Phylogeny Group

The Angiosperm Phylogeny Group, or APG, refers to two international groups of systematic botany who came together to try to establish a consensus view of the taxonomy of flowering plants that would reflect new knowledge in angiosperm relationships based upon molecular systematics studies....
, have renamed these two groups as subfamilies within the Betulaceae- Betuloideae and Coryloideae.

closest relatives of the Betulaceae are believed to be the Casuarinaceae

Casuarinaceae

Casuarinaceae is a family of dicotyledonous flowering plants placed in the order Fagales, consisting of 3 or 4 genera and approximately 70 species of trees and shrubs native to the Old World tropics , Australia, and the Pacific islands....
, or the She-Oaks.

Betulaceae are believed to have originated at the end of the Cretaceous

Cretaceous

The Cretaceous , usually abbreviated K for its German translation Kreide, is a geologic period from circa to million years ago . In the geologic timescale, the Cretaceous follows on the Jurassic period and is followed by the Paleogene period....
period (c.

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Encyclopedia

Betulaceae, or the Birch Family, includes six genera of deciduous

Deciduous

Nut (fruit)

TREE

TREE was a Boston hardcore punk band formed in the summer of 1990. They were active in the Boston music scene until disbanding in 2002....
s and shrub

Shrub

Birch

Birch is the name of any tree of the genus Betula , in the family Betulaceae, closely related to the beech/oak family, Fagaceae....
es, alder

Alder

Hazel

Hornbeam

Northern Hemisphere

Southern Hemisphere

Andes

South America

Angiosperm Phylogeny Group

Casuarinaceae

Evolutionary History

The Betulaceae are believed to have originated at the end of the Cretaceous

Cretaceous

Mediterranean climate

A Mediterranean climate is one that resembles the climate of the lands in the Mediterranean Basin, which includes over half of the area with this climate type world-wide....
due to the proximity of the Tethys Sea, which covered parts of present-day Tibet

Tibet

Tibet is a Tibetan Plateau in Asia, north of the Himalayas, and the home to the indigenous Tibetan people and its related ethnic groups. With an average elevation of 4,900 metres , it is the highest region on Earth and has in recent decades increasingly been referred to as the "Roof of the World"....
and Xinjiang

Xinjiang

Xinjiang is an autonomous region of China of the People's Republic of China. It is a large, sparsely populated area, spanning over 1.6 million sq....
into the early Tertiary

Tertiary

The Tertiary is a a term for a Geologic time scale#Terminology 65 million to 1.8 million years ago. The Tertiary covered the time span between the superseded Secondary period and an out-of-date definition of the Neogene#Controversy....
period. This point of origin is supported by the fact that all six genera and 52 species are native to this region, many of those being endemic. It is believed that all six modern genera had diverged fully by the Oligocene

Oligocene

The Oligocene is a geologic epoch of the Paleogene Geologic Timescale and extends from about 33.9 million to 23 million years before the present....
, with all genera in the family (with the exception of Ostryopsis

Ostryopsis

Ostryopsis is a small genus of two species of deciduous shrubs belonging to the birch family Betulaceae. The species have no common English name, though Hazel-hornbeam has been suggested, reflecting their similarities to the closely related Hazels and Ostrya....
) having a fossil record stretching back at least 20 million years from the present.

Uses

The Common Hazel

Common Hazel

The Common Hazel is a species of hazel native to Europe and western Asia, from the British Isles south to Iberian Peninsula, Greece, Turkey and Cyprus, north to central Scandinavia, and east to the central Ural Mountains, the Caucasus, and northwestern Iran....
Corylus avellana and the Filbert

Filbert

The Filbert is a species of hazel native to southeastern Europe and southwestern Asia, from the Balkans to Ordu in Turkey.It is a deciduous shrub 6?10 m tall, with plant stem up to 20 cm thick....
Corylus maxima are important orchard

Orchard

An orchard is an intentional planting of trees or shrubs maintained for food agriculture. Orchards comprise fruit tree or nut -producing trees grown for commercial production....
plants, grown for their edible nuts

Nut (fruit)

Ornamental plant

Ornamental plants are typically grown in the flower garden or as house plants. Most commonly they are grown for the display of their flowers. Other common ornamental features include leaves, scent, fruit, Plant stem and bark....
, widely planted in parks and large gardens; several of the birches are particularly valued for their smooth, brightly coloured bark

BARK

BARK was an early Electromechanics. BARK was built using standard phone relays, implementing a 32-bit binary machine and could perform addition in 150 ms and multiplication in 250 ms....
.

The wood

Wood

Wood is an organic material; in the strict sense wood is produced as secondary xylem in the stems of woody plants, notably trees but also shrubs, etc....
is generally hard, tough and heavy, hornbeams particularly so; several species were of significant importance in the past where very hard wood capable of withstanding heavy wear was required, such as for cartwheel

Cartwheel

A cartwheel may mean:*Cartwheel , an acrobatic maneuver*a part of a cart*Cartwheel Galaxy*List of hats and headgear#Women's, worn by women...
s, water wheel

Water wheel

A water wheel is a machine for converting the energy of flowing or falling water into more useful forms of power, a process otherwise known as hydropower....
s, cog wheels

Gear

A gear is a component within a Transmission device that transmits rotational force to another gear or device. A gear is different from a pulley in that a gear is a round wheel that has linkages that mesh with other gear teeth, allowing force to be fully transferred without slippage....
, tool

Tool

A broad definition of a tool is an entity used to interface between two or more domains that facilitates more effective action of one domain upon the other....
handles, chopping boards and wooden pegs. In most of these uses wood has now been replaced by metal

Metal

In chemistry, a metal is a chemical element whose atoms readily lose electrons to form positive ions , and form metallic bonds between other metal atoms and ionic bonds between nonmetal atoms....
or other man-made materials.