TAXACER, SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. 61 
TAXUS. 
FLoweErs naked, dicecious or monecious, solitary, axillary; the staminate stipi- 
tate; stamens 4 to 12; the pistillate sessile; ovule erect on a ring-like accrescent 
disk becoming a fleshy aril nearly inclosing the ripe seed. Leaves alternate, linear, 
persistent. 
Taxus, Linneus, Gen. 312 (1753). — Adanson, Fam. PI. ii. i, 112. — Baillon, Hist. Pl. xii. 31. — Masters, Jour. 
481. — A. L. de Jussieu, Gen. 412.— Endlicher, Gen. Linn. Soc. xxx. 7. 
216. — Meisner, Gen. 353. — Bentham & Hooker, Gen. Verataxus (Nelson) Senilis, Pinacew, 168 (1866). 
iii. 431. — Eichler, Engler & Prantl Pflanzenfam. ii. pt. 
Long-lived slow-growing glabrous trees or shrubs, producing, when cut, numerous vigorous shoots 
from the stumps, with brown or dark purple bark, hard close-grained slightly resinous durable wood, 
slender terete green branchlets, small ovate acute buds in the axils of the two or three upper leaves, 
covered with numerous loosely imbricated acute light yellow-green scales increasing in size from below 
upward, the outer thick and firm, persistent on the base of the branchlet, the inner membranaceous and 
accrescent, and long fibrous roots. Leaves subspirally disposed, spreading, appearing distichous on 
lateral branchlets by the twisting of the short compressed petioles,’ linear, often falcate, flat, acute and 
mucronate at the apex with slender ridged acute callous tips, gradually narrowed at the base, dark 
green, smooth and carinate on the upper surface, paler, papillate and stomatiferous on the lower, their 
margins slightly thickened and reflexed, vascular bundle single, ellipsoidal in section, without resin- 
canals, persistent for many years. Flowers opening in very early spring from globose buds covered 
with many thin ovate acute loosely imbricated light yellow-green scales often slightly tinged with red, 
decussate, appearing in autumn on branches of the year, the staminate numerous in adjacent axils, 
the pistillate scattered and less abundant. Staminate flower a quarter of an inch long, composed of a 
slender stipe surrounded at the base by the persistent bud-scales increasing in size from below upward, 
bearing at the apex a globose turbinate head of from four to eight pale yellow stamens; anthers 
subglobose before opening, depressed above, four to six-angled, ight yellow, composed of from four 
to six conical pendent cells peltately connate from the apex of a short cylindrical filament, opening 
below introrsely, spreading and umbraculiform after the discharge of the globose pollen-grains, their 
connectives scarcely mucronulate. Pistillate flower sessile in the axil of the upper scale-like bract of 
a short’ axillary simple or rarely two-forked branch, and close to its minute tip,’ subtended by five 
broadly ovate rounded thin decussate scales, more or less connate into a cup persistent under the 
fruit ; ovule erect, orthotropous, sessile on an annular accrescent disk. Seed ripening and falling in 
the autumn, ovate-oblong, often obscurely three-angled, gradually narrowed and short-pointed at the 
apex, marked at the base by the large depressed triangular or oval hilum showing the ends of three 
fibro-vascular bundles, about a third of an inch long, entirely or nearly surrounded by, but free from, 
the now thickened succulent translucent sweet scarlet aril-like disk of the flower, truncate and open at 
the apex, separating in falling from the scales at its base and the short peduncle; seed-coat thick, of 
two layers, the outer thin and membranaceous or fleshy, the inner much thicker, subligneous. Embryo 
axile in copious fleshy uniform albumen; cotyledons two, shorter than the superior radicle. 
Taxus, which is confined to the northern hemisphere, is homomorphous, the six species which are 
1 On the leading shoots and on the fastigiate branches of some spiral arrangement of the leaves is apparent. (See Masters, Jour. 
of the forms of Taxus baccata the petioles are not twisted, and the Linn. Soc. xxx. 7.) 
? Eichler, Bliithendiagramme, pt. i. 6+. 
