310 TAXUS ; OR 



Gen. TAXUS. Tournefort. The Yew. 



Flowers, dicecious. or male and female on different plants, 

 and axillary. 



Fruit, solitary, and one-seeded. 



Disk, a fleshy open cup, and viscid. 



Seeds, nut-like, with a bony shell, free, and exposed on the 

 upper part. 



Leaves, linear, decurrent, and alternate. 



Seed-leaves, in twos, and very short. 



Name, derived either from * taxis,' arrangement, from the 

 leaves being placed on the branchlets like the teeth of a comb ; 

 or from ' toxon,' a bow, the wood being much used for that 

 purpose ; or from ' toxicum,' poison, the common Yew being 

 considered poisonous. 



All evergreen trees, or bushes, found in the temperate parts 

 of Europe, Asia, and America. 



No. 1. Taxus adpressa. Knight, the Flattened or Creeping 



Yew. 

 Syn. Taxus tardiva, Lawson. 

 „ „ Sinensis tardiva. Knight. 

 „ „ baccata adpressa, Carriere. 

 „ „ brevifolia, Hort. 

 „ Cephalotaxus adpressa, Hort. 

 „ „ tardiva, Siehold. 



„ „ brevifolia, Hort. 



Leaves, oblong, or bluntly oval, rounded at both ends on the 

 lesser branchlets, but much longer and more pointed on those 

 of the leading shoots ; more or less two-rowed, flat, rather dis- 

 tant, on very short footstalks, decurrent, and terminated at the 

 apex in a very short spiny point, sometimes wanting on the 

 adult ones ; from two to four lines long, and one line and a half 

 broad, of a dark glossy green above, and glaucous below on 



