Podocarpus.| CXXIXa. TAXACES (Stapf). 339 
or all barren, and supporting a solitary terminal ovule ; ovule usually 
more or less exceeding its scale, sometimes long-exserted, rarely 
quite enclosed in the cone. Mature cones usually little altered or 
the axis or also the scales becoming more or less fleshy. Seeds usually 
exserted ; testa coriaceous to woody, with or without an outer covering 
(epimatium), which is either free or more or less fused with the testa 
and varies from membranous to leathery or fleshy.—Shrubs or 
trees; leaves usually spirally arranged, quaquaversal or dorsi- 
ventrally disposed in one plane, scale-like or linear to lanceolate, 
rarely ovate, always evergreen. 
Genera 10, with over 100 species, mostly in the tropics and the southern 
temperate zone ; few in the northern temperate zone. 
1. PODOCARPUS, L’Herit.; Benth. et Hook. f. Gen. PI. iii. 434. 
Dicecious, very rarely monoecious. Male cones usually axillary, 
variously arranged, ‘bracteate at the base, sessile or peduncled ; 
scales numerous, spirally arranged, imbricate, with usually broad, 
triangular to ovate-rotundate, rarely lanceolate blades and 2 rela- 
tively large dorsal pollen-sacs near the base. Pollen with 2 vesicular 
appendages. Female cones terminal or axillary, usually reduced to 
a few sterile lower scales, which are more or less fused with each 
other and the axis—the whole plexus becoming ultimately fleshy 
(receptacle)—and 1 or 2 terminal fertile scales, rarely spike-like with 
few to numerous usually distant fertile scales ; scales spirally arranged 
or opposite in decussate pairs, the lower often with a foliaceous 
blade, the upper squamiform ; ovules solitary, adnate to the face of 
the fertile scale and usually much exceeding it, inverted, and enclosed 
in a false aril (epimatium) arising from the face of the scale and 
adnate to the single integument. Seeds deciduous togethér with the 
modified (receptacle) or unmodified remainder of the cone or 
falling from the scales of its persistent axis; testa and false aril 
(rarely also the fertile scale) forming a coriaceous or externally 
fleshy and internally woody shell. Embryo axile ; cotyledons 2.— 
Shrubs or trees, often of great height. Leaves squamiform or linear 
or lanceolate to ovate, usually spirally arranged, but placed dorsi- 
ventrally, rarely opposite. Male cones solitary or clustered or dis- 
posed in compound inflorescences, rarely apical. Seeds and recep- 
tacles where present greenish or brown or sometimes vividly coloured, 
the former always conspicuously exposed. 
About 60 species, mostly in the mountain forests of the tropics, a few in the 
temperate regions of the southern hemisphere and in Japan. 
Receptacle well developed, fleshy, obconical to sub- ee 
globose, finally bright red... aS aes ws 1. P. milanjianua. 
