CONIFERA. SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. 139 
SEQUOTA. 
FLowers naked, monecious, solitary, the staminate terminal or axillary ; stamens 
numerous; anther-cells 2 to 5; the pistillate terminal; scales numerous, bearing 3 
to 7 ovules. Fruit a woody strobile. Leaves alternate, often dimorphic, persistent. 
Sequoia, Endlicher, Syn. Conif. 197 (1847); Gen. Suppl. Wellingtonia, Lindley, Gard. Chron. 1853, 823. 
iv. pt. 11. 7. — Bentham & Hooker, Gen. iii. 429. — Eich- Gigantabies (Nelson), Senilis, Pinacew, 77 (1866). 
ler, Engler & Prantl Pflanzenfam. ii. pt. i. 85. — Masters, Athrotaxis, Baillon, Hist. Pl. xii. 39 (in part) (not G. 
Jour. Linn. Soc. xxx. 22. Don) (1892). 
Resinous aromatic trees, with tall massive lobed trunks, thick bark of two layers, the outer deeply 
lobed and composed of fibrous scales, the inner close and firm and from half an inch to an inch in thick- 
ness, soft durable straight-grained dark red heartwood, thin nearly white sapwood, stout short horizontal 
branches, slender terete branchlets deciduous in the autumn, scaly or naked buds, and fibrous roots. 
Leaves ovate-lanceolate or linear and distichously spreading, especially on young trees and branches, or 
linear, acute, compressed and keeled on the back, closely appressed or spreading at the apex, the two 
forms sometimes appearing on the same branch or on different branches of the same tree. Flowers 
minute, solitary, moncecious, appearing in early spring from buds formed the previous autumn. Stami- 
nate flowers terminal or in the axils of upper leaves, ovoid or oblong, stipitate, subtended by numerous 
decussately imbricated scale-like bracts, their axes bearing in many series numerous spirally disposed 
spreading stamens ; filaments short, dilated into ovate acute subpeltate connectives incurved at the apex, 
often denticulate on the margins, bearing on their inner face at the base from two to five but usually 
three pendulous globose two-valved anther-cells opening below dorsally ; pollen-grains simple. _Pistillate 
flower terminal, ovoid or oblong, composed of numerous ovate scales bluntly keeled on the back, the keels 
produced into short or elongated points, spirally imbricated in numerous series, closely adnate to the thick 
fleshy much shorter ovuliferous scales rounded above and bearing below their upper margin in two rows 
from five to seven free orthotropous bottle-shaped ovules erect at first but afterward horizontal and finally 
reversed. Fruit an ovoid or shortly oblong pendulous strobile, maturing during its first season, 
persistent after the opening of the scales and the discharge of the seeds; its scales, formed by the 
enlargement of the united flower and ovuliferous scales, indurate and woody, contracted at the base into 
slender stipes or gradually enlarged upward, widened at the apex into narrow thickened transverse 
oblong rugose disks, transversely depressed through the middle, and often mucronulate. Seeds from 
five to seven under each scale, reversed and pendulous, oblong-ovate, compressed ; testa membranaceous 
or slightly crustaceous, produced into broad thin wings. Embryo axile, straight in copious fleshy 
albumen ; cotyledons from four to six, longer than the inferior radicle, turned away from the small 
depressed pale hilum. 
Sequoia, which inhabited the Arctic Circle during the cretaceous and tertiary epochs, and was 
then a conspicuous feature of the vegetation of Europe and of the interior regions of North America, 
where several species existed,’ is now confined to the mountain forests of California, and reduced to two 
species, one inhabiting the northern and central coast ranges, and the other the western slopes of the 
Sierra Nevada. 
1 Gray, Proc. Am. Assoc. Adv. Sci. xxi. 1 (Sequoia and its His- 15-18*. — Saporta, Origine Paléontologique des Arbres, 89. — Zittel, 
tory) ; Scientific Papers, ii. 142.— Lesquereux, Rep. U. S. Geolog. Handb. Paleontolog. ii. 296, f. 205. 
Surv. vii. 75, t. 7, £. 3-16"; t. 65, £. 1-4; t. 61, £. 25-29; t. 62, f 
