Lindera
Lindera is a genus of about 80–100 species of flowering plants in the family Lauraceae, mostly native to eastern Asia but with three species in eastern North America. The species are shrubs and small trees; common names include spicewood, spicebush, and Benjamin bush.

Uncredited · Public Domain · via Wikipedia/Commons. May be a photograph of a specimen, or an artist’s reconstruction — an interpretation of a skeleton, since colour and soft tissue are almost never preserved.
On record
Recorded, not inferred- Sits inside
- LauraceaePBDB
- Diet
- "photoautotroph"PBDB, for Angiospermae
Time the record covers
At least 55 million years on record.
The record covers at least 56 Mya to 774 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 66 Mya to 129 ka.
45 occurrences of Lindera on record, most of them in the Miocene. The Paleobiology Database records this as a living group, and the chart stops with its fossils rather than at the present. Bar height is expected occurrences, not a count: each fossil is spread across the span it is dated to, so a tall narrow bar means tight dating and a low wide one means loose.
When
45 occurrencesThese are dates about fossils, not the animal: the record can only begin after it arose and end before it died out, so either end may reach further. Shares are expected occurrences: a fossil dated to a span is counted partly in each period it straddles. More on what this infers.
Found in
20 formations
- Itahana Formation · Tomioka Group8
- Fort Union Formation6
- Green River Formation5
- Animas Formation2
- Ferris Formation2
- Bangmai Formation2
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The named rock units Lindera has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 5 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Lindera and its relatives
MioceneWhere Lindera and its relatives were recorded in the Miocene.
Found in the same rock
566 taxa- Acer16 sites
- Quercus15 sites
- Cinnamomum13 sites
- Carpinus12 sites
- Rhus12 sites
- Alnus10 sites
- Salix10 sites
- Wisteria10 sites
- Populus9 sites
- Bambusites8 sites
- Betula8 sites
- Fagus8 sites
- Koelreuteria8 sites
- Liquidambar8 sites
- Pterocarya8 sites
- Sophora8 sites
- Ulmus8 sites
- Zelkova ungeri8 sites
- Castanea7 sites
- Fraxinus7 sites
- Tilia7 sites
- Celtis6 sites
- Cladrastis6 sites
- Cornus6 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 36 sites for Lindera, and this reads all of them. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too. The 24 sharing the most are listed.
This is not a list of everything alive at the time. It is only what has come out of the same ground as this animal and been written down.
Entered from
13 references- Late Miocene and Pliocene Floras in Central Honshu, Japan13
- Paleocene flora of the Rocky Mountains and Great Plains10
- A catalogue of Cenozoic megafossil plants in China8
- Late Paleocene-early Eocene climate changes in southwestern Wyoming: Paleobotanical analysis3
- Pleistocene fossil leaflets of Albizia kalkora (Roxb.) Prain (Leguminosae subfamily Mimosoideae) from central Honshu, Japan, and its implications for historical biogeography2
- The Eocene Green River Flora of northwestern Colorado and northeastern Utah2
- The early Eocene flora of Horsefly, British Columbia, Canada and its phytogeographic significance1
- Floral diversity during Plio-Pleistocene Siwalik sedimentation (Kimin Formation) in Arunachal Pradesh, India, and its palaeoclimatic significance1
- Reconstructing Neogene vegetation and climates to infer tectonic uplift in western Yunnan, China1
- Die mittelmiozaenen und obermiozaenen Floren aus der Meuroer und Raunoer Folge in der Lausitz. III. Fundstellen und Palaeobiologie1
- Fruits and seeds of the Middle Eocene Nut Beds Flora, Clarno Formation, Oregon1
- The Rujada Flora of west central Oregon1
Each of the 45 occurrences read was entered from one of these publications, ordered by how many each accounts for. This is not a search for papers mentioning the name. 1 further reference is not listed. Entries link to doi.org where the Paleobiology Database holds an identifier, and to its own record where it does not. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.
Media and terms
Media content2
Picture of Lindera
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- nobody named on the record
- Licence
- Public Domain
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
3D model
- Source
- Sketchfab
- Credit
- skyviewaerialsolutions
- Licence
- CC Attribution
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
Smithsonian Open Access and MorphoSource were not reached for this taxon, so this list is what the others held rather than everything there is.
The description on this site
- Source
- Wikipedia, “Lindera”
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.
Keep going
What may have been alongside itLauraceae through timeFormations of the MioceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Thunberg 1783