Kingdom Plantae Family Fagaceae Section Quercus Scientific name Quercus cubana Rank Species | Order Fagales Genus Quercus Series Virentes Higher classification Oak | |
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Quercus sagraeana, the Cuban oak, is a medium-sized evergreen tree native to western Cuba in the Cuban pine forests ecoregion.
Nomenclature
The Cuban oak was first described by Nuttall (1842) as Quercus sagraeana based on the specimen collected by Ramón de la Sagra. Using the same specimen, but apparently unaware of the original name, Richard (1853) named the Cuban oak Q. cubana. Trelease (1924) did not view Q. sagraeana as a species in its own right but as a variety of Q. virginiana. He proposed the name Q. virginiana var. sagraeana. Muller (1961) renamed it Q. oleoides var. sagraeana, hypothesizing that the Cuban oak population was a subspecies of Q. oleoides, originating from the Yucatán region of Mexico, but with introgression from Q. geminata coming from Florida. He considered the morphologically variable Cuban population a hybrid swarm that had stabilized and was distinct from the other live oaks of the series Virentes. A recent study of molecular genetic variation and taxonomically informative leaf morphology shows that the Cuban oak shows little evidence of hybrid origin and is most similar to Q. virginiana, but distinct enough to be regraded as a separate species, Q. sagraeana.