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Warm-Temperate Deciduous Forests around the Northern Hemisphere pp 153–163Cite as

The Status of Quercus pubescens Willd. in Europe

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Abstract

Taxonomic and nomenclatural disagreements are still encountered in the study of Quercus pubescens Willd. in Europe and are discussed here. This includes two current antithetical viewpoints on this taxon, i.e. the acceptance of the huge phenotypic variability among and within its populations within a single species vs. the ranking of these phenotypes as distinct species within the subgenus Quercus (the European white oaks sensu Schwarz).

Up to now many names have been attributed to the European white oaks, especially to the complex included into section Dascia Kotschy sensu Schwarz (the “downy oaks”), revealing contrasting opinions among taxonomists since the very first subdivision of the genus. While some schools in southern Europe still emphasize the distinctness and the species status of many taxa described during the earliest botanical surveys, the current trend is toward rejecting many names and considering them as synonyms.

Our review examines the extremely divergent opinions of specialists on these variations and supports the robustness of the current taxonomical status of Quercus pubescens Willd. as an inclusive taxon.

A plant’s name is the key to its literature – in other words, the key to what we know about it.

(van Steenis 1957)

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Notes

  1. 1.

    According to our interviews from Umbria to Calabria, peasants in C and S Italy apply the term “quercia castagnara”or “cerqua castagnola” not to a particular sort of downy oak but rather to individuals bearing sweet (and often very small) acorns. These individuals used to be and still are preserved as isolated trees in the rural landscape because of their “once tested” valuable acorns. Due to this, they usually attain old age and large dimensions, and give origin to unlikely legends about intentional plantation, cultivation and even deliberate “selection” by local settlers.

  2. 2.

    The German of Schwarz (1937) is extremely intricate, wriggling through long, complicated sentences as easy to follow as a Sumerian epigraph. Few people in the new generations of European scientists outside the German-speaking area can read or simply decipher it. His Latin is also a difficult task for all Europeans today. This means that most modern researchers and scholars rely on the quite poor iconography, which on the other hand is extremely useful for understanding the extraordinary message of Schwarz, i.e. the plesiomorphism across lineages. Even so, it is hardly a reliable reference for clear subdivisions based on leaf form. The text has therefore been and still is ignored, except perhaps for the locations mentioned.

  3. 3.

    The impressive list of synonyms, if critically examined, should also point clearly towards the fuzzy morphological –geographical value of the Schwarz (1937) system. Indeed, a conceptually robust property of his monograph is the natural typological ordination of forms (inherited from Örsted 1866, see Schwarz 1937, p. 10) according to a progression of characters from ancestral to derivative. He considers the “series” as a cline of morphological traits arising from degrees of xeromorphism (leaf outlines, incisions, lobes, hairiness). His classification is functional and considers derivative characters within the series as much as convergence among different series due to environmental constraints. This means that he reviews at the rank of series, all taxa quoted in previous literature in order to emphasize the clinal variation of forms, without any explicit evaluation of “good”or at least not distinct species.

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank Gregor Aas (Ecological Botanical Garden, University of Bayreuth, Germany) for fruitful discussions, Javier Loidi (University of the Basque Country, Spain) for informations on oaks in the Iberian peninsula, Andreas Gohlke and Reinhold Stahlmann (University of Bayreuth, Germany) for help with producing the distribution map. C. Wellstein was supported by the Bavarian State Ministry of Sciences, Research and the Arts within the FORKAST project.

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  1. Facoltà di Scienze e Tecnologie, Libera Università di Bolzano, Piazza Università 5, 39100, Bolzano, Italy

    Camilla Wellstein

  2. Biogeography, University of Bayreuth, Universitätsstrasse 30, 95447, Bayreuth, Germany

    Camilla Wellstein

  3. Dipartimento di Biologia Ambientale, Università degli Studi di Roma “La Sapienza”, Largo Cristina di Svezia 24, 00165, Rome, Italy

    Francesco Spada

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    Elgene O. Box

  2. Yokohama City University, Yokohama, Japan

    Kazue Fujiwara

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Wellstein, C., Spada, F. (2015). The Status of Quercus pubescens Willd. in Europe. In: Box, E., Fujiwara, K. (eds) Warm-Temperate Deciduous Forests around the Northern Hemisphere. Geobotany Studies. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-01261-2_8

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