Betulaceae
family of plants
Betulaceae, the birch family, includes six genera of deciduous nut-bearing trees and shrubs, including the birches, alders, hazels, hornbeams, hazel-hornbeam, and hop-hornbeams, numbering a total of 167 species. They are mostly natives of the temperate Northern Hemisphere, with a few species reaching the Southern Hemisphere in the Andes in South America. Their typical flowers are catkins and often appear before leaves.
In the past, the family was often divided into two families, Betulaceae (Alnus, Betula) and Corylaceae (the rest). Recent treatments, including the Angiosperm Phylogeny Group, have described these two groups as subfamilies within an expanded Betulaceae: Betuloideae and Coryloideae.
Betulaceae flowers are monoecious, meaning that they have both male and female flowers on the same tree. Their flowers present as catkins and are small and inconspicuous, often with reduced perianth parts. These flowers have large feathery stamen and produce a high volume of pollen, as they rely on wind pollination. Their leaves are simple, with alternate arrangement and doubly serrate margins.
Evolutionary history
The Betulaceae are believed to have originated at the end of the Cretaceous period (about 70 million years ago) in central China.
The public source identifies “Betulaceae” as family of plants. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Betulaceae, family and plants.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 11, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q156064. The Library of Congress control number is sh85013490. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank.
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This entry incorporates text from “Betulaceae” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.