Dipteronia is a genus with two living and one extinct species in the soapberry family Sapindaceae. The living species are native to central and southern China. The fossil species has been found in Middle Paleocene to Early Oligocene sediments of North America and China.
Classification
Older classifications segregated the maples (Acer) and Dipteronia into the family Aceraceae, however work by the Angiosperm Phylogeny Group (APG I onward) and related investigations led to the subsuming of Acereae into Sapindaceae as the tribe Acereae. Dipteronia is considered to be the sister genus to Acer. Dipteronia dyeriana is listed by the
IUCN as being a "Red List" threatened species, and known from only five isolated populations in south-eastern Yunnan Province. In the Early Eocene the species expanded northward to the Eocene Okanagan Highlands sites such as the Klondike Mountain Formation of Washington, Driftwood Shales and Tranquille Formation of British Columbia as well as into the John Day Formation of central Oregon. During the middle to late Eocene the species spread east and south to the Ruby Basin Flora of Montana and the Florissant Formation of Colorado, while the last occurrences are in the Early Oligocene, Rupelian of the Bridge Creek Flora in the upper John Day Formation. Concurrently, several Dipteronia brownii fruits have also been collected from Rupelian lacustrine mudstones in Chuxiong Yi Autonomous Prefecture southwestern China.