TAXACE^ 97 



hill resrion of the Rockv Mountains from Alberta to western Texas, and westward to 

 the coast of British Columbia and Washington and to eastern Oregon, Nevada, and 

 northern Arizona. 



II. TAXACEiE. 



Slightly resinous trees and shrubs, producing when cut vigorous stump 

 shoots, with fissured or scaly bark, light-colored durable close-grained wood, 

 slender green branchlets, linear-lanceolate entire rigid acuminate sharp-pointed 

 spirally disposed leaves, usually appearing 2-ranked by a twist in their short 

 compressed petioles and persistent for many years, and small ovate acute buds. 

 Flowers opening in early spring from buds formed the previous autumn, 

 dicEcious, axillary and solitary, surrounded by the persistent decussate scales 

 of the buds, the staminate composed of numerous filaments united into a 

 column, each filament surmounted by several more or less united pendant pollen- 

 cells ; the pistillate of a single erect ovule, becoming in fruit a seed with a 

 hard bony shell, raised upon or more or less surrounded by the enlarged and 

 fleshy aril-like disk of the flower; embryo axile, in fleshy ruminate or uniform 

 albumen ; cotelydons 2, shorter than the superior radicle. Of the ten genera 

 widely distributed over the two hemispheres, two occur in North America. 



CONSPECTUS OF THE NORTH AMERICAN GENERA. 



Filaments dilated into 4 pollen-sacs united into a half ring ; fruit drupe-like ; albumen 

 riiminate. 1. Tumion. 



Filaments dilated into a globose head of 4-8 connate pollen-sacs ; fruit berry-like, scarlet ; 

 albumen uniform. 2. Taxus. 



1. TUMION, Raf. 



Glabrous fcetid or pungent aromatic trees, with fissured bark and verticillate or 

 opposite spreading or drooping branches. Leaves thin, long-pointed, abruptly con- 

 tracted at the base, slightly rounded on the back, grooved below, with a broad sto- 

 matiferous groove on each side of the midvein, revolute and slightly thickened on 

 the margins, dark green and lustrous on the upper surface, often pale on the lower 

 surface. Flowers : the staminate crowded in the axils of adjacent leaves, oval or 

 oblong, composed of 6 or 8 close whorls each of 4 stamens, subverticillately arranged 

 on a slender axis ; filaments stout and expanded above into 4 globose yellow pollen- 

 sacs united into a half ring, their connectives produced above the cells ; the pistillate 

 less numerous and scattered, sessile, the ovule surrounded by and finally inclosed 

 in an ovate urn-shaped fleshy sac, and becoming at maturity an ovoid or obovate 

 drupe-like green or purple fruit pointed at the apex, separating when ripe from the 

 basal scales persistent on the short stout stalk, covered with a thick leathery outer 

 coat closely investing the seed. Seed ovoid, acute at the ends, apiculate at the apex, 

 marked at the base by the large dark hilum ; seed-coat thick and woody, its inner 

 layer folded into the thick white albumen. 



Tumion is now confined to Florida, western California, Japan, and central and 

 northern China. Four species are recognized. Of the exotic species the Japanese 

 Tumion nuciferum, Greene, is occasionally cultivated in the eastern states. 



Tumion is from 6{>fjiiov, a name given by the ancients to some kind of Yew-tree. 



