GENERA OF TAXACEE AND CONIFERS. 29 
English gardens, wherein D. Don’s plan of calling the Silver Firs 
Picea and the Spruces Abies is still followed. As the precise 
application of the classical words is a matter of controversy, 
there is not, except for the sake of uniformity, much preference 
either way*. The genus Picea as here understood consists of 
trees with angular or flat leaves springing from well-marked 
pulvini. The stipitate male flowers are axillary or terminal, 
the stipes surrounded by perule. The connective of the anther 
is prolonged into a rounded toothed crest, the cells dehiscing 
lengthwise; pollen as in Pinus. The female cones are at the 
ends of the branches, erect, or generally ultimately pendulous. 
Seed-scales persistent, always longer than the bracts; seeds 
without resin-vesicles. The direction of the cones varies 
according to age, and but little stress can be laid upon it as a 
distinguishing characteristic. The cotyledons vary from 5-15 in 
number, are 3-sided, and, like the primary leaves, are toothed at 
the edges. 
The genus is marked out into two sections by the nature of 
the leaves, which in the true Spruces, § Genuine of Link, are 
tetragonal and with uniform parenchyma; while in the § Dehis- 
centes of Link (which is nearly equivalent to the later pub- 
lished § Omorica of Willkomm) the leaves are more flattened, 
less distinctly tetragonal, and with palisade-cells and stomata 
on the upper portion of the leaf. This last section includes a 
North-west American species, two or three Japanese species, and 
one lately discovered in Servia, P. Omorica, which Wettstein t 
cousiders may be a survival from the Tertiary period. The leaf- 
structure of this species is different from the Japanese and 
North-west American species with which it has been sought to 
associate it. It has no palisade-tissue, and the resin-canal is 
on the phloem side of the leaf. 
* «“ Piceam vocavi cum antiquissimis Botanicis omnibus preeter Dodonzeum. 
Hune Linneus secutus Abietem vocavit. Nomen Linneanum non mutarem nisi 
Du Roi et Pottius initium fecissent, quos multi alii secuti sunt, ita ut par sit 
ratio quos sequi velles.”—Link, Abiet. Hort. Berol. Cult. in Linnea, xv. p. 517 
(1841). See also Jas. Backhouse in ‘ Gardeners’ Chronicle,’ Nov. 27, 1886, in 
which the question is ably discussed ; the writer, whose opinion is entitled to 
most respectful consideration, arguing that Linnzeus was correct in his identi- 
fication of the classical plant, and that his nomenclature should in consequence 
be followed. 
+ Wettstein, “Die Omorika Fichte,” Sitzber. d. Akad. d. Wissenschaft in 
Wien, Bd. ic. 55, Taf. 5. 
