38 CYPRESS-PINES OR SANDARAC-TREES. 
IV._THE CYPRESS-PINES OR SANDARAC-TREES. 
THE coniferous trees (Coniferee) of our colonial territory are 
limited to four, three of which pertaining to the genus Callitris or 
Frenela, the fourth belonging to Nageia or Podocarpus. This 
paucity of trees of the Pine-order is all the more remarkable, as 
elsewhere in sub-alpine regions, such as we possess, Conifer 
are well represented ; so it is also in Tasmania and New Zealand, 
but our own Alps produce only a dwarf and often prostrate conifer 
of the Yew-tribe, the Nageia montana. More accessible and more 
conspicuous are our Frenelas, which are members of the Cypress- 
tribe and differ merely, so far as generic characters are concerned, 
from the Callitris quadrivalvis or true Sandarac-Cypress of the 
countries at the Mediterranean Sea in having a fruit-whorl of six 
not four lobes. The resinous exudation, well known as Sandarac 
and much used for varnishes, is almost identical in all these trees. 
The most common of our Frenelas is that, which occurs in the 
desert-tracts of the colony, Frenela or Callitris verrucosa, far 
known by the name Murray-Pine, though not belonging to the fir- 
tribe of the order. It has the habit of a tall cypress, in which 
respect it not differs from the many other Frenelas, which occur in 
various parts of Australia. The minute scale-like leaves, decurrent 
along the joints of the branchlets, are also in all species (but one 
with quaternary leaves) ternate, and they remind of similar 
structures of the foliage of Casuarinas and Exocarps. From the 
two other Victorian Frenelas the desert-species is separated by 
its not distinctly angular ultimate branchlets, not usually clustered 
but mostly solitary fruits, which moreover are neither angular nor 
much furrowed before expansion ; the lobes of the fruit are not 
partly dilated upwards, nor much pointed towards the summit of 
the back, but often warty outside; from the last-mentioned 
note the species obtained its systematic name. The two other 
‘congeners, indigenous to our colony, namely F. rhomboidea and 
I’. Endlicheri, are not of frequent occurrence and are inhabitants 
of mountains or coasts. Frenela advances beyond Australia only 
