CONIFERS. SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. 133 
LIBOCEDRUS. 
FLowers naked, monecious or diccious, terminal, solitary; stamens numerous, in 
many ranks, decussately opposite ; anther-cells usually 4; scales of the pistillate flower 
4 or 6, acuminate; ovules 2. Fruit a strobile maturing in one season. Leaves 
dimorphic, persistent. 
Libocedrus, Endlicher, Syn. Conif. 42 (1847); Gen. Suppl. Heyderia, K. Koch, Dendr. ii. pt. ii. 177 (1873). 
iv. pt. ii. 3. — Bentham & Hooker, Gen. iii. 426.— Eichler, Calocedrus, Kurz, Jour. Bot. xi. 196 (1873). 
Engler & Prantl Pflanzenfam. ii. pt. i. 95.— Masters, Thuya, Baillon, Hist. Pl. xii. 34 (in part) (not Linnzeus) 
Jour. Linn. Soc. xxx. 19. (1892). 
Resinous aromatic trees, with scaly bark, soft straight-grained durable fragrant wood, spreading 
branches, flattened branchlets disposed in one horizontal plane forming an open distichous spray, and 
often ultimately deciduous, naked buds, and fibrous roots. Leaves scale-like, opposite, imbricated in 
four ranks, glandular or eglandular on the back, entire with thin cartilaginous margins, persistent ; on 
leading shoots nearly equally decussate, closely appressed or spreading, often remote by the lengthening 
of the nodes, dying and becoming woody before falling ; on lateral flattened branchlets those of the 
lateral ranks much compressed, conspicuously carinate and nearly covering those of the other ranks; 
on seedling plants linear-lanceolate and spreading. Flowers appearing in winter or very early spring 
from buds formed the previous autumn, monecious, with those of the two sexes on different branchlets 
or dicecious, solitary, terminal. Staminate flower subsessile, globose or ovoid; stamens from twelve 
to sixteen, decussately opposite on a slender axis; filaments short, dilated into scale-like broadly ovate 
or orbicular eccentrically peltate connectives bearing usually four subglobose two-valved anther-cells 
opening on the back; pollen-grains-simple. Pistillate flower subglobose, ovoid or oblong, terminal on 
a short lateral branchlet, often subtended by several pairs of leaf-like scales slightly enlarged and 
persistent under the fruit, composed of four or rarely of six decussately opposite scales, acuminate with 
long or short points; scales of the upper or of the middle rank much longer than those of the lower 
rank, ovate or oblong, fertile, bearing at the base on a minute accrescent ovuliferous scale two erect 
collateral orthotropous ovules. Fruit maturing in one season, ovoid or oblong, surrounded at the 
base by the somewhat enlarged upper leaves of the branchlet, persistent after the discharge of the 
seeds until the following season, its scales subcoriaceous, marked at the apex by the free slightly 
thickened mucronulate border of the enlarged flower-scale; the lowest pair thin, ovate, reflexed, much 
shorter than the oblong or ovate thickened woody scales of the second rank widely spreading at 
maturity ; those of the third rank, when present, confluent into an erect woody septum. Seeds in 
pairs or solitary by abortion, erect, oblong-lanceolate, compressed; testa coriaceous, produced into 
lateral membranaceous wings, the one narrow, the other broad, oblique and nearly as long as the 
scale, free, or united, with a conspicuous suture; embryo axile in fleshy albumen ; cotyledons two, 
radicle cylindrical, superior. 
Eight species of Libocedrus, which is perhaps too closely connected with Thuya to be con- 
sidered generically distinct, are now distinguished; one is widely scattered through the mountain 
forests of western North America; two inhabit western South America, where they are distributed from 
Chili to Patagonia ; two occur in New Zealand, two in New Caledonia,’ and one in southwestern 
1 Libocedrus austro-caledonica, Brongniart & Gris, Bull. Soc. ii. 32 (Records of Observations on Sir W. McGregor’s Highiand- 
Bot. France, xviii. 140 (1871), and Plants from New G'uinea) (1889). — Beissner, Handb. Nadelh. 31. 
Libocedrus Papuana, F. Mueller, Trans. R. Soc. Victoria, i. pt. 
