Nowe dane o florze kopalnej Turowa na podstawie analizy nabłonkowej

Abstract

NEW DATA ON FOSSIL FLORA AT TURÓW OBTAINED FROM CUTICLE EXAMINATIONS

Summary

This article is the first report on the research made by the present author on the cuticles isolated from the Miocene clays that occur at Turów, near Bogatynia. The research allowed the author to detect a lot of new genera and families of this flora, and some new species of epidermis.

A dozen or so types of fructification of fungi found to occur epiphytically on leaves have been distinguished. Among ferns only one representative has been encountered. Cuticles of Coniferae have been worked out by Z. Zalewska (1959, 1961), new species, however, have not been ascertained by the present author. Flora of monocotyledons turned out to be very abundant. Numerous are aquatic plants of Helobiae, e.g. Marcoduria inopinata W l d., Wackersdorfia dubia P e t e r s, d. Potamogeton and Hydrocharitaceae. Other monocotyledons comprise the representatives of climbers Smilax tertiaria n.sp., and two species of Dioscorea, therein a new one. Among the remaining monocotyledons are: one species of grass, and four species of palms as well as two representatives of Araceae and Typha sp.
Cuticles of dicotyledons are barely worked out. The author has found here eight species of Lauraceae that belong to Ocotea, Aniba, Litsea, Lindera, Cinnamomum and Laurophyllum. Other dicotyledons have been determined as Dioyspros sp., Myrsine tertaria n.sp., Quercus lusaticum J ¬ h n i c h e n, Castanopsis sp., and the cuticle of a leaf pedundde of Viscum lusaticum Cz.
The differences between the flora composition determined on the cuticles encountered and macrofossils may be explained by still unfinished studies carried on these two types of fossil remains. Another reason of this difference consists, according to the present author, in the nature of the rock material: most cuticles determined during the examinations are from clay deposits characterized by fine-grained structure, favourable for preservation of soft fragments of local leaves, whereas charred fruits and seeds, usually found to occur in sand-gravel lenses, may come from the adjacent, higher situated areas (H. Czeczott, 1959). As far as the ecologic and climatic reasons are concerned, the results at the examinations of cuticles from Turów are conformable to those of macroscopic analysis.