CONIFERS. SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. 19 



PICEA. 



Flowers solitary, naked, monoecious, the staminate axillary or terminal ; stamens 

 indefinite, anther-cells 2, surmounted by their crested connectives ; pistillate flowers 



^ 



terminal or axillary ; ovules 2, under each scale. Fruit a woody strobile maturing in 

 one season. Leaves angular or flat, spirally disposed. 



M ■ 



Picea, Link, Ahhand, Ahad, BerL 1827, 179 (1830). — sieu, Gen. 414 (in part). — D. Don, Lambert Pinus, iii. 



Engelmann, Trans, St Louis Acad. ii. 211. — Bentham (1837). 



& Hooker, Gen, iii. 439. — Eichler, Engler & Prantl, Pinus, Linnaeus, Gen. ed. 5, 434 (in part) (1754). 



Fflanzenfam. ii. pt. i. 77. — Masters, Jour, Linn. Soc, licher, Gen. 260 (in part). — Meissner, Gen. 352 (in 



End- 



XXX. 28. 

 Abies, Linnjeus, Gen. 294 (in part) (1737). — A. L. de Jus- 



part). — BaiUon, Hist. PI, sii. 44 (in part). 



Pyramidal trees, with tall tapering trunks often strongly buttressed at the base, thin scaly or 

 rarely deeply furrowed bark, soft pale wood containing numerous resin canals, slender whorled 

 horizontal limbs clothed with pendent often elongated twice or thrice ramified lateral branches, their 

 ultimate divisions stout, glabrous or pubescent, thick roots wide spreading near the surface of the 

 ground, and long flexible tough rootlets. Branch buds usually three, surrounded with numerous 



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more or less developed acicular scales articulate on persistent bases and generally deciduous before the 

 opening of the buds, the two lateral in the axils of upper leaves, and much smaller than the terminal 

 bud, ovate, acute or obtuse, covered by numerous spirally arranged light chestnut-brown accrescent 

 scales acute or rounded and on some species strongly reflexed at the apex, those of the first pair 

 minute, opposite and lateral; outer scales thickening and long persistent at the base of the branchlet, 

 the inner thin, scarious, slightly united into a cup-like cover, deciduous in one piece from the end of 

 the young branchlet.^ Leaves spirally disposed, densely packed and appressed in the bud and on 

 the lengthening branchlets into cone-shaped clusters, ultimately extending out from the branch on all 

 sides, or occasionally appearing two-ranked by the twisting of the petioles of those on the lower side, 

 mostly pointing to the end of the branch, frequently somewhat incurved above the middle, acute or 

 acuminate at the apex, with slender callous tips, or rarely obtuse, entire, longer and more slender on 

 sterile branches than on fertile branches and leading shoots, articulate on persistent prominent rhombic 

 ultimate woody bases, dark or light green and lustrous, or blue or bluish green, keeled above and 

 below, tetragonal and stomatiferous with numerous rows of stomata on the four sides, or flattened 

 and stomatiferous only on the upper surface and occasionally also on the lower, containing one or 

 two lateral resin ducts close to the epidermis of the lower side, or destitute of resin ducts, persistent 

 generally for from seven to ten years, deciduous in drying. Flowers appearing in early spring, 

 monoecious,^ terminal or in the axils of upper leaves on branchlets of the previous year from buds 

 formed during the summer, surrounded at the base by involucres of the numerous enlarged scarious 

 scales of their buds. Staminate flowers oblong, oval or cylindrical, erect, short-stalked or often nodding 

 at maturity on long slender pedicels, composed of numerous spirally arranged yellow or scarlet anthers 

 opening longitudinally, their connectives produced into broad nearly circular toothed crests ; pollen- 

 grains bilobed with lateral air-sacs. Pistillate flowers erect on short stalks, oblong-cylindrical, pale 

 yellow-green or scarlet, composed of numerous rounded or pointed scales usually broader than long, 

 entire or denticulate on the margins, spirally imbricated in many ranks, bearing on their inner face 

 near the base two inverted collateral ovules, each scale in the axil of an oblong generally acute or 

 acuminate or of a nearly orbicular bract, at first much longer but before the fecundation of the ovules 



