Machilus thunbergii
Machilus thunbergii, the Japanese bay tree, red machilus, or tabunoki, is a widespread species of flowering plant in the family Lauraceae. It is native to Vietnam, Taiwan, southeast and north-central China, the Korean Peninsula, and Japan. A sturdy evergreen tree, usually 10–15 m (30–50 ft) tall, and reaching 20 m (70 ft), it is used for timber, and as a street tree. Its bark is the source of makko, a powder used to make a mosquito‑repelling incense. It prefers coastal areas, and can handle saline soil.

そらみみ · CC BY-SA 4.0 · 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
- MachilusPBDB
- Diet
- "photoautotroph"PBDB, for Angiospermae
Time the record covers
At most 2.9 million years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 3.6 Mya and 774 ka, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
2 occurrences of Machilus thunbergii on record, most of them in the Pliocene. 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
2 occurrences- Pliocene50%
- Pleistocene50%
These 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
2 formations
Loading coastlines…
The named rock units Machilus thunbergii has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.
Machilus thunbergii and its relatives
PlioceneWhere Machilus thunbergii and its relatives were recorded in the Pliocene.
Found in the same rock
55 taxa- Alseodaphne2 sites
- Berchemia2 sites
- Castanopsis2 sites
- Cinnamomum2 sites
- Juglans2 sites
- Litsea2 sites
- Acer1 site
- Acer miofranchetii1 site
- Acer subpictum1 site
- Annona1 site
- Bauhinia1 site
- Berhamniphyllum miofloribundum1 site
- Betula1 site
- Calocedrus1 site
- Carpinus1 site
- Castanea1 site
- Castanopsis fissa1 site
- Cornus1 site
- Cryptocarya1 site
- Cyclea sp.1 site
- Desmos1 site
- Dioscorea1 site
- Drynaria dimorpha1 site
- Euodia1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 2 sites for Machilus thunbergii, 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
2 references- Reconstructing Neogene vegetation and climates to infer tectonic uplift in western Yunnan, China1
- A catalogue of Cenozoic megafossil plants in China1
Each of the 2 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. 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 Machilus thunbergii
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- そらみみ
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
3D model
- Source
- Sketchfab
- Licence
- CC0 Public Domain
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
MorphoSource was not reached for this taxon, so this list is what the others held rather than everything there is.
The description on this site
- 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 itMachilus through timeFormations of the PlioceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Siebold and Zuccarini 1843