58 
SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. 
TAXACEX, 
growing in calcareous soil on the bluffs of the river and for a few miles along its tributaries, on the 
slopes of ravines, which open to the river through the bluffs, and on the borders of its swamps.’ 
The wood of Tumion tauxifolium is hard and strong, although light and rather brittle, and is close- 
grained, with a satiny surface, susceptible of receiving a beautiful polish ; it contains thin inconspicuous 
bands of small summer-cells and numerous obscure medullary rays. 
The specific gravity of the absolutely dry wood is 0.5145, a cubic foot 
lighter colored sapwood. 
It is clear bright yellow, with thin 
weighing 32.06 pounds.? Exceedingly durable in contact with the soil, it has been largely used locally 
for fence-posts, with the result that most of the large specimens have been destroyed. 
Tumion tavifolium was found in 1833* by Mr. H. B. Croom * on the bluffs of the Appalachicola, 
opposite the town of Aspalaga. 
Introduced by its discoverer into northern gardens, it has proved 
hardy as far north as eastern Massachusetts, although a mild climate is necessary to develop all its 
beauty, and in western Europe. 
1 Gray, Scientific Papers, ii. 187 (A Pilgrimage to Torreya).— 
Chapman, Bot. Gazette, x. 251, with a map of the country occupied 
by this tree. 
2 Tumion taxifolium appears to grow comparatively slowly. The 
specimen in the Jesup Collection of North American Woods in 
the American Museum of Natural History in New York is fourteen 
inches in diameter inside the bark, and displays ninety-nine layers 
of annual growth. This tree, however, was probably shaded during 
the first fifty years of its life, as it grew less rapidly then than in 
its second half century. 
3 The first notice of Tumion was published in 1834 by Nuttall 
(Jour. Phil. Acad. vii. 96), who suggested that it might be the 
Mexican Taxus montana. 
4 Hardy B. Croom (1799-1836) was born of wealthy parents in 
Lenoir County, North Carolina, and was graduated with honor 
from the State University. He studied law in New Berne, and was 
admitted to the bar, but never practiced. Having married in New 
Berne, he devoted himself to the care of large cotton plantations, 
and became interested in planting in western Florida, which he 
visited annually for several years, traveling from North Carolina 
in his private carriage, attended by outriders, and accompanied by 
a supply-wagon containing a tent and camping outfit. On one of 
these journeys he discovered Tumion on the bluffs of the Appala- 
chicola opposite Aspalaga, where one of his plantations was situ- 
ated. Mr. Croom with his wife and three children passed the 
summer of 1836 in New York, and, embarking for Charleston on 
the steamship Hope in September, the whole family was lost at 
sea by the foundering of the vessel. 
Mr. Croom published in The American Journal of Science in 1834 
and 1835 three papers on the botany of the southern states, in 
which several new species were proposed, and much information 
upon the distribution of others was first printed. A paper by him 
on the genus Sarracenia, in which he first described Sarracenia 
Drummondii, appeared in the fourth volume of the Annals of the 
Lyceum of Natural History of New York. In 1837, after his death, 
his Catalogue of Plants, native or naturalized in the vicinity of New 
Bern, North Carolina, appeared with a preface by Dr. Torrey, a 
previous edition prepared in connection with Dr. H. Loomis having 
been issued in 1833. Intending to devote himself to the study of 
botany and the exploration of Florida, Mr. Croom had begun 
arrangements for the publication of that sequel to Michaux’s Sylva 
of North America which was afterwards executed by Nuttall. 
Croomia, an humble herb found by him growing under the shade 
of Tumion on the banks of the Appalachicola, with one species 
confined to the southeastern United States and another to Japan, 
recalls the name of a modest, amiable, and scholarly man. (See 
preface to Catalogue of Plants of New Bern, ed. 2.) 
EXPLANATION OF THE PLATE. 
Puate DXII. Toumion Taxiroiium. 
WCWHARDAPWONDH 
A seed, natural size. 
bob 
—) 
. An embryo, enlarged. 
b+ ph fee 
oo be 
A flowering branch of the staminate tree, natural size. 
. A staminate flower, enlarged. 
A stamen, rear view, enlarged. 
. A stamen, front view, enlarged. 
A flowering branch of the pistillate tree, natural size. 
. A pistillate flower, enlarged. 
. A fruiting branch, natural size. 
Vertical section of a fruit, natural size. 
. End of a branch with winter-buds, natural size. 
. Portion of a branchlet with leaf-scars, natural size. 
. A leaf divided transversely, enlarged. 
