Table II.

African fossil morphotype (MT) compared to similar extant pollen and fossil MTs.

	Tolypanthus maclurei	Dendrophthoe pentandra	Taxillus caloreas	Phragmanthera rufescens (s.l.)a	Saldanha MT (this study)	Changchang MT	Altmittweida MT
Age/epoch	Recent	Recent	Recent	Recent	Early Miocene	Middle Eocene (Lutetian-Bartonian)	Late Oligocene-early Miocene (Chattian-Aquitanian)
Distribution/locality	East Asia	South, East and Southeast Asia	East Asia	Tropical Africa	Saldanha Bay, South Afruca, core sample #114 755	Changchang Basin, close to Jiazi Town, Qiongshan County, Hainan, China	Altmittweida, Saxony, Germany
P/E ratio	oblate	oblate	oblate	oblate	oblate	oblate	oblate
Outline p.v.	trilobate to straight-triangular	concave-triangular to trilobate	concave-triangular	concave-triangular	concave-triangular to trilobate	concave-triangular to broadly trilobate	convex-triangular
Outline eq. v.	elliptic	elliptic	elliptic	elliptic	elliptic		emarginate
Equatorial apices	obcordate	obcordate	obcordate	T-shaped	obcordate to T-shaped	broadly rounded	broadly obcordate
P in LM (µm)	8.3–15.8	13.3–15	11.7–15	15–18.3	8.8–12.5		4.4–5.5
E in LM (µm)	25–30	21.7–25.8	23.3–30	26.7–31.7	20–25	21.1–24.4	14.4–17.8
Aperture	syn(3)colpate	syn(3)colpate	syn(3)colpate	syn(3)colpate	syn(3)colpate	syn(3)colpate	syn(3)colpate
Exine thickness in LM (µm)	0.8–1.3	1.1–1.3	1.0–1.3	1.1–1.4	0.8–1.0	0.9–1.1	0.9–1.1
Wall peculiarities	triangular intercolpial thickening of nexine in polar area	sexine partly reduced in polar area, colpi widening to a small field	hexagonal nexine thickening in polar area	triangular intercolpial thickening of nexine in polar area	triangular intercolpial thickening of nexine in polar area	rhombic structures (opercula) covering equatorial apices	intercolpial nexine thickening at pole, sexine partly reduced in polar area
Sculpture (SEM)	nanoverrucate to granulate	nanoverrucate to granulate	nanoverrucate to granulate	nanoverrucate to granulate	nanoverrucate to granulate	granulate	nano- to microverrucate to granulate
Type and size of sculpture elements (µm)	verrucae 0.2–0.5 (−0.8)	verrucae 0.2–0.6	verrucae 0.1–0.5	verrucae 0.1–0.6	verrucae 0.2–0.5		verrucae 0.2–1.3
Margo (SEM)	well developed, psilate or partly granulate, with triangular protrusions in polar area	well developed, psilate or partly granulate to nanoverrucate, with triangular protrusions in polar area	well developed, psilate with few nanoverrucae or granula in polar area	well developed, psilate or partly granulate	well developed, psilate or partly granulate, with triangular protrusions in polar area	well developed, psilate	psilate to microverrucate, granulate
Colpus membrane (SEM)	nanoverrucate and granulate	nanoverrucate and granulate	nanoverrucate and granulate	nanoverrucate and granulate	nanoverrucate and granulate	granulate	nanoverrucate and granulate

Note: Distribution of extant taxa from Qui and Gilbert (2003) and Polhill and Wiens (1998). Pollen morphology of extant taxa summarised from Grímsson et al. (2018). Pollen morphology of fossil mophotypes summarised from Grímsson et al. (2017). ^a Phragmanthera rufescens has been widely applied as an aggregate for tropical African Phragmanthera. According to Polhill and Wiens (1998) P. rufescens is only known from Guinée and the Casamance region of southern Senegal, but the sample figured in Grímsson et al. (2018) is from Cameroon and might therefore represent P. kamerunensis or another Phragmanthera species.