Description:

• Deciduous or evergreen, monoecious, trees or shrubs; buds with imbricate scales
• Leaves alternate, simple, thin or leathery, entire, dentate, sinuate or pinnately lobed, rarely entire; stipules deciduous and inconspicuous
• Inflorescences unisexual, in axils of leaves or bud scales, usually clustered at base of new growth; male inflorescences lax, solitary or 1-3 together in pendulous spikes or catkins; female inflorescences solitary, in erect, stiff dichasia, 1-5-flowered, with terminal cupule and sometimes 1-many sessile, lateral cupules
• Male flowers: perianth tube campanulate; lobes 3-6, subtended by small bracteoles; stamens (2-)6(-12), surrounding tuft of silky hairs (apparently a reduced pistillode)
• Female flowers with smaller calyx, surrounded by an involucre of many imbricate or annular scales; ovary inferior, 3-locular; placentation axile; ovules 2 per locule, anatropous, crassinucellar, bitegmic; styles usually 3, short, recurved; stigmas broad, lining inner faces of styles
• Fruit a nut (acorn) arising on or partly enclosed by a cup-shaped or saucer-shaped cupule, involucral scales hardened into teeth or tubercles or annular lamellae
• Seed 1, without endosperm; embryo straight, as long as seed, cotyledons plano-convex
• x = 12 (aneuploids, polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• *Fagaceae
  • Dumortier: 11 (1829), as Fagineae
  • Prantl: 47 (1889)
  • Kubitzki: 301 (1993)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Genera 9; species 620-800; one of the most important families of woody plants of the temperate and tropical regions, mostly of the northern hemisphere, in SE Asia crossing the equator; no native representatives in tropical South America or in tropical and southern Africa
• Southern Africa: Genus 1, species at least 5, all exotic

References:

• DUMORTIER, B.C.J. 1829. Fagineae. Analyse des familles des plantes. Casterman, Tournay
• KUBITZKI, K. 1993. Fagaceae. In K. Kubitzki, J.G. Rohwer & V. Bittrich, The families and genera of vascular plants - dicotyledons 2. Springer-Verlag, Berlin
• PRANTL, K. 1889. Fageae. Die natürlichen Pflanzenfamilien III,1

Resources:

• Fagaceae genus: *Quercus