CUPULIFERZ, SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. 21 
FAGUS. 
FLOWERS unisexual, monecious, apetalous, in unisexual clusters; calyx 4 to 
7-lobed, the lobes imbricated in estivation; stamens 8 to 40; pistillate flowers inclosed 
in an involucre of imbricated scale-like bracts ; ovary inferior, 3-celled ; ovules two in 
each cell, suspended. Fruit a nut inclosed in an echinate involucre. Leaves alternate, 
penniveined, stipulate, deciduous or persistent. 
Fagus, Linnzus, Gen. 292 (in part) (1737). — A. L. de Jus- Nothofagus, Blume, Mus. Bot. Lugd. Bat. i. 307 (1850). — 
sieu, Gen. 409 (in part). — Endlicher, Gen. 275. — Meis- Prantl, Engler & Prantl Pflanzenfam. iii. pt. i. 52. 
ner, Gen. 346.— Baillon, Hist. Pl. vi. 257.— Bentham Lophozonia, Turczaninow, Bull. Soc. Nat. Mosc. i. 396 
& Hooker, Gen. iii. 410. — Prantl, Engler & Prantl (1858). 
Phlanzenfam. iii. pt. i. 58. Phegos, Saint-Léger, Ann. Soc. Bot. Lyon, vii. 133 (1880). 
Trees or rarely shrubs, with watery juice, smooth close or deeply furrowed scaly bark, hard 
close-grained wood, slender terete branchlets, elongated scaly buds, thick roots often productive of 
numerous stems, and fibrous rootlets. Leaves alternate, penniveined, usually dentate, convex and 
plicate along the veins in vernation,' thick and firm, deciduous, leaving in falling small elevated semi- 
oval leaf-scars in which appear marginal rows of small fibro-vascular bundle-scars (Eufagus), or not 
plicate, small, coriaceous, persistent (Nothofagus). Stipules linear-lanceolate, infolding the leaf in the 
bud, fugacious or rarely persistent. Staminate flowers from the axils of minute bractlets or ebracteolate, 
fascicled in globose many-flowered heads on long drooping bibracteolate peduncles produced from the 
inner scales of the terminal bud and at the base of the shoots of the year or from the axils of the 
lowest leaves, or (Nothofagus) solitary or in from two to three-flowered clusters on short peduncles 
from the axils of the leaves of the year. Calyx subcampanulate, from four to seven-lobed, the lobes 
imbricated in estivation. Stamens from eight to forty, inserted on the base of the calyx; filaments 
slender, filiform, exserted; anthers oblong, erect, attached on the back, introrse, obtuse or sagittate at 
the base, two-celled, the cells contiguous, opening longitudinally. Ovary wanting. Pistillate flowers in 
from two to four-flowered clusters, sessile, short-stalked, or rarely raised on elongated slender peduncles, 
in the axils of the upper leaves of the year, invested by numerous awl-shaped bractlets, the outer 
longer than the flowers and deciduous, the inner shorter and coherent at the base into four- 
lobed involucres. Calyx urceolate, its tube three-angled, adnate to the ovary, the short limb four or 
five-lobed. Staminodia wanting. Ovary inferior, three-celled ; styles three, slender, recurved, pilose, 
exserted from the involucre, stigmatic toward the apex only, or short and often broad, stigmatic 
over the inner face (Nothofagus), ovules two in each cell, suspended from the apex of the inner 
angle, amphitropous; micropyle superior. Fruiting involucre woody, stalked or sessile, ovoid or 
subglobose, covered with variously shaped sometimes glandular prickles or tubercles, inclosing the 
from two to four nuts, ultimately splitting into four valves. Nut ovate, acute, unequally three-angled, 
the angles acute or winged, longitudinally ridged on the more or less concave sides, chestnut-brown 
and lustrous, tipped with the remnants of the styles, attached at the base by a small triangular umbili- 
cus; pericarp thin, of two closely united coats, the outer crustaceous or subcoriaceous, the inner 
membranaceous. Seed solitary, filling the cavity of the nut, suspended with the abortive ovules from 
the tip of the hairy dissepmment of the ovary pushed by the growth of the seed into one of the angles 
of the nut, exalbuminous; testa membranaceous ; cotyledons oily, thick and fleshy, plano-convex, 
1 Henry, Nov. Act. Acad. Ces. Leop. xviii. 532, t. 40. 
