282 SKETCH OF THE CONIFERS OF JAPAi?". 



or flower-bearing buds in their axilljB. These leaf-bearing buds 

 are also provided with a sheath of 10 or 13 dry scales joined into 

 a tube or sheath about 4 lines in length, encircling the fascicle of 

 leaves from 4 to 6 inches long (fig. 30). The scales composing 

 the sheath have their margins broken up into a crowd of filaments 

 which intimately surround those below them, as shown in fig. 31.^ 

 The leaves in each fascicle are two (fig. 32), stiff and rigid, slightly 

 flexuose, twisted, each leaf making a turn and a half upon itself, 

 so that the edge of the leaf which looks up at the base looks down- 

 wards at about a third from the base, looks upwards again at 

 about a third from the apex, and downwards at the apex; they 

 are rather abruptly pointed, glabrous and glaucescent; the margins 

 seem smooth to the naked eye, but the finger drawn down the 

 edge betrays a slight roughness, and a good lens shows a series 

 of close scabrous serrulations ; the back is very convex, and bears 

 about 18 rows of stomata more regularly arranged towai'ds the 

 base than the apex (fig. 33) ; the inner side is very concave, and 

 bears about 12 or 14 rows of stomata (fig, 34), The leaves are 

 persistent for three years. The flower-bearing buds are clustered 

 into an abbreviated spike of from 10 to 20 at the axillae on the 

 lower part of the young branches (fig. 85). Male catkins sessile, 

 cylindrical, almost an inch long (fig. 36) ; the stamina are closely 

 imbricated, alternate; the filaments short, filiform, dilated at the 

 apex into a suborbicular process irregularly crenulated, from the 

 base of which descend the two Ipculi of the anther, which open 

 behind by a longitudinal slit. The female catkins are terminal^ 

 solitary, or in small clusters, elliptical, each on a short twig, thickly 

 covered with membraneous dry serrulated sharp lanceolate scales, 

 which are numerous, densely imbricated, alternately short-stalked, 

 broadly wedge-shaped from the base, then suborbicularly rounded, 

 with the margin somewhat thickened, very shortly and slightly (if 

 at all) mucronate ; biovulate. Bracts ragged, with a wedge-shaped 

 base, truncate, retuse, more than twice as short as the scale, sub- 

 sequently disappearing. Cones ripening the second year (see fig. 

 28, above), from an inch to an inch and a half in length, reflexed 



* A figure of this structure is given above because, altliougli it is no doubt 

 commoii to the sheaths of all the long-sheathed piaes, it is not generally to 

 be readily detected, and the present species therefore is valuable as furnishing 

 a clear explanation of whut may be called the mechanical formation of the 

 sheath ; the scales which form the sheath and their ragged filamentous margins 

 all adhere together (probably by some resinous matter) so firmly that they can 



scarcely be separated without tearing them. The wood-cut scarcely sufficiently 

 shows the continuity of the filaments with the scale itself. 



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