Fagaceae

=Family description=
 * Trees** (the Oak family) without latex or coloured sap, often with thick, deeply cracked bark.
 * Leaves** alternate, spirally arranged, often clustered near the end of twigs. With stipules, which are often dropped early.
 * Flowers** tiny, usually creamy-yellow, in slender, catkin like clusters at end of twigs and upper leaf axils, males and females in different flowers on the same tree. Males with 6 (4-7) spreading sepals, no petals and 6-18 free stamens. Females similar but sepals closely pressed together around 3 styles, ovary inferior.
 * Fruit** a nut, partly or completely enclosed by cupules often with spines or ridges.

=General info=
 * Distribution** Pan-tropical (except Africa), but mostly temperate. About 700 species.
 * Ecology** Dominant component of hill and montane evergreen forests.
 * Uses** Firewood (coppicing), timber, edible nuts.
 * Similar to** Myricaceae, but thid family differs in having a superior ovary and fruit being a drupe. Lauraceae, this family differs in absence of stipules and fleshy cupule at the base of a fleshy drupe.

=Treated genera=
 * Castanopsis
 * Lithocarpus
 * Quercus

[|Fagaceae.pdf]

Castanopsis oviformis

Lithocarpus gracilus

Quercus elmeri