Charme, Carpinus betulus

Carpinus betulus (European or common hornbeam) is a hornbeam native to: Western Asia; central, eastern, and southern Europe; including southern England. . It requires a warm climate for good growth, and occurs only at elevations up to 600 metres. It grows in mixed stands with oak, and in some areas beech, and is also a common tree in scree forests.

Hornbeams are relatively small hardwood trees in the genus Carpinus (Cár-pi-nus). Though some botanists grouped them with the hazels (Corylus) and hop-hornbeams (Ostrya) in a segregate family, Corylaceae, modern botanists place the hornbeams in the birch subfamily Coryloideae. The 30–40 species occur across much of the north temperate regions, with the greatest number of species in east Asia, particularly China. Only two species occur in Europe, and only one in eastern North America.

Betulaceae, or the Birch Family, includes six genera of deciduous nut-bearing trees and shrubs, including the birches, alders, hazels, hornbeams and hop-hornbeams, numbering about 130 species. They are mostly natives of the temperate Northern Hemisphere, with a few species reaching the Southern Hemisphere in the Andes in South America.

In the past, the family was often divided into two families, Betulaceae (Alnus, Betula) and Corylaceae (the rest); however, recent treatments, including the Angiosperm Phylogeny Group, have renamed these two groups as subfamilies within the Betulaceae- Betuloideae and Coryloideae.

The closest relatives of the Betulaceae are believed to be the Casuarinaceae, or the She-Oaks.

The Betulaceae are believed to have originated at the end of the Cretaceous period (c. 70 million years ago) in central China. This region at the time would have had a Mediterranean climate due to the proximity of the Tethys Sea, which covered parts of present-day Tibet and Xinjiang into the early Tertiary period. This point of origin is supported by the fact that all six genera and 52 species are native to this region, many of those being endemic. It is believed that all six modern genera had diverged fully by the Oligocene, with all genera in the family (with the exception of Ostryopsis) having a fossil record stretching back at least 20 million years from the present.