TAXACE, 
TUMION 
SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. 
59 
CALIFORNICUM. 
California Nutmeg. 
LEAVES nearly flat, green below, elongated. 
purple. 
Tumion Californicum, Greene, Pittonia, ii. 195 (1891). — 
Merriam, North American Fauna, No. 7, 343 (Death 
Valley Exped. ii.).— Coville, Contrib. U. S. Nat. Herb. 
iv. 225 (Bot. Death Valley Haxped.).— Lemmon, West- 
American Cone-Bearers, 83. 
Torreya Californica, Torrey, N. Y. Jour. Pharm. iii. 49 
(1854); Pacific KR. Rk. Rep. iv. pt. v. 140.— J. M. 
Bigelow, Pacific R. R. Rep. iv. pt. v. 24. — Kellogg, 
Proc. Cal. Acad. i. 35. — Newberry, Pacific R. R. Rep. 
vi. 61, 90, £. 27. — Hoopes, Hvergreens, 385. — Parlatore, 
De Candolle Prodr. xvi. pt. ii. 506. — K. Koch, Dendr. 
ii. pt. ii. 101. — Gordon, Pinetum, ed. 2, 410. — Brewer 
Fruit green, slightly tinged with 
Leaves and branches pungent-aromatic. 
Board Forestry, iii. 186, t. 29 (Cone-Bearers of Cali- 
fornia). — Beissner, Handb. Nadelh. 188. — Masters, 
Jour. R. Hort. Soc. xiv. 254. — Hansen, Jour. R. Hort. 
Soc. xiv. 318 (Pinetum Danicum).— Koehne, Deutsche 
Dendr. 6. 
Torreya Myristica, Hooker f. Bot. Mag. lxxx. t. 4780 
(1854). — Van Houtte, #7. des Serres, ix. 175, t. — Car- 
ritre, Traité Conif. 515.— Gordon, Pinetum, 327. — A. 
Murray, Edinburgh New Phil. Jour. n. ser. x. 7, t. 3 — 
Veitch, Man. Conif. 311. 
Caryotaxus Myristica, Henkel & Hochstetter, Syn. Na- 
delh. 368 (1865). 
& Watson, Bot. Cal. ii. 110.— Sargent, Forest Trees N. Foetataxus Myristica (Nelson) Senilis, Pinacee, 168 
Am. 10th Census U. S. ix. 186. — Lauche, Deutsche (1866). 
Dendr. ed. 2, 50. — Hooker f. Gard. Chron. n. ser. Tumion Californicum, var. littorale, Lemmon, West- 
xxiv. 553, f. 125.— Lemmon, ep. California State Amerivan Cone-Bearers, 84 (1895). 
A tree, from fifty to seventy or, occasionally, one hundred feet in height,’ with a trunk one or two 
or rarely four feet in diameter, sending up from the stem when cut numerous vigorous stems, and 
whorls of spreading slender slightly pendulous branches, which form a handsome pyramidal or, in old 
age, a round-topped head. The bark of the trunk is from one third to one half of an inch in thickness, 
gray-brown tinged with orange-color, and deeply and irregularly divided by broad fissures into narrow 
ridges covered with elongated loosely appressed plate-like scales. The slender branchlets are light 
green when they first appear, and become more or less tinged with olive-color during their first winter, 
and bright red-brown during their second season. The buds are ovate, acute, and a quarter of an inch 
long, and are covered by thick acute apiculate lustrous light red-brown scales. The leaves are slightly 
falcate, nearly flat, dark green and lustrous on the upper and somewhat lighter and marked with deep 
narrow grooves on the lower surface, tipped with slender callous points, from one inch to three inches 
and a half long, and from one sixteenth to nearly one eighth of an inch wide. The flowers appear in 
March and April; the staminate are about a third of an inch in length, with thin broadly ovate acute 
scales, the inner being scarious and erose on the margins; the pistillate are nearly a quarter of an 
inch long, with oblong-ovate rounded scales. The fruit is ovate or oblong-ovate, from an inch to an 
inch and a half in length, and light green more or less streaked with purple; the testa is thin and 
brittle, with a pale laminate inner seed-coat, deeply infolded into the ruminate albumen, which, 
resembling in structure that of the Nutmeg, has given to this tree its common name. 
An inhabitant of the borders of mountain streams, and nowhere common, the California Nutmeg 
is widely distributed in California from Mendocino County to the Santa Cruz Mountains in Santa Clara 
County in the coast region, where, especially at the north, it grows to its largest size and is most 
abundant, and along the western slopes of the Sierra Nevada from Eldorado to Tulare County at 
elevations of from three to five thousand feet above the level of the sea. 
1 Kellogg, Forest Trees of California, 3. 
