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Nothofagus gunnii

Nothofagus gunnii, known commonly as Tanglefoot or Deciduous beech or simply as Fagus, is a Tasmanian endemic belong to the family of 'southern beeches', Nothofagaceae. The family comprises one genus, Nothofagus, which includes some 36 species distributed in the southern Hemisphere, including New Guinea and New Caledonia as well as Australia, New Zealand and South America. N. gunnii belongs to the sub-genus Fuscospora, one of four sub-genera within Nothofagus. Interestingly, its closest relative, N. alessandri, lives half way across the globe in South America, while the remaining species in the sub-genus live in New Zealand. This suggests that N. gunnii and N. alessandri, in particular, go back a long way. Indeed, macrofossil evidence from Tasmania suggests that a tree, with identical leaves, existed as long ago as the Early Oligocene



Nothofagus gunnii has distinctive, rounded, crinkled leaves which turn yellow in autumn. The leaves are formed completely before they emerge in spring so that they can simply emerge, unfold by hydrating, and get on with the job of photosynthesising without losing too much time. Unsurprisingly, the leaves have lower freezing tolerance than N. cunninghammii but the buds and seeds are well adapted to cold .The trees are monoecious, with short brownish flowers and wind-pollinated seeds Flowering in N. gunnii, like all Australian beeches, is largely irregular from year to year, with several years of poor production often interspersed with a really good year, known as a mast year, where lots of flowers and seeds are produced. Interestingly, mast years often coincides with other species including N. cunninghammii and Athrotaxis native conifers which have a similar strategy (Read, 1989).