CONIFERE. SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. 149 
TAXODIUM. 
FLoweErs naked, monecious, the staminate panicled ; stamens 6 to 8; anther-cells 
4 to 8; the pistillate terminal, solitary; scales spirally disposed; ovules 2. Fruit a 
globose or obovoid woody strobile ripening in one season. 
lanceolate or scale-like, deciduous or subpersistent. 
Leaves alternate, linear- 
Taxodium, Richard, Ann. Mus. xvi. 298 (1810). — End- 
licher, Gen. 259. — Meisner, Gen. 352. — Bentham & 
Hooker, Gen. iii. 429.— Eichler, Engler & Prantl Pflan- 
zenfam. ii. pt. i. 90.— Baillon, Hist. Pl. xii. 37. — Mas- 
ters, Jour. Linn. Soc. xxx. 24. 
Schubertia, Mirbel, Nouv. Bull. Soc. Philom. iii. 123 
(1812). 
Cuprespinnata, (Nelson) Senilis, Pinacee, 61 (1866). 
Resinous polymorphic trees, with furrowed scaly bark, light brown durable wood, erect, ultimately 
spreading branches, deciduous, usually distichous lateral branchlets, scaly buds,’ stout horizontal roots, 
often producing erect woody projections, and fibrous rootlets. Leaves alternate, subspirally disposed, 
pale and stomatiferous below on both sides of the obscure midribs, dark green above, linear-lanceolate, 
spreading distichously, or scale-like and appressed on lateral branchlets, the two forms appearing on the 
same or on different branches of the same tree or on separate trees, deciduous in the autumn or in the 
spring. Flowers opening in very early spring from buds formed the previous year, and covered with 
numerous thin broadly ovate concave scales increasing in size from below upward, or in the autumn. 
Staminate flowers short-pedicellate or subsessile in the axils of scale-like bracts in long terminal 
drooping panicles, obovate before anthesis. Stamens from six to eight, distichously opposite on a 
slender elongated stipe; filaments slender, abruptly enlarged into broadly ovate eccentrically peltate 
membranaceous yellow connectives truncate below, bearing at the base on the inner surface in two 
rows four or five or from six to nine globose two-valved pendulous anther-cells opening on the back 
longitudinally ; pollen-grains simple. Pistillate flowers scattered near the ends of branches of the 
previous year, solitary, terminal on abbreviated axillary scaly branchlets, subglobose, composed of 
numerous ovate spirally imbricated scales long-pointed and spreading at the apex, adnate below to the 
thickened fleshy ovuliferous scales bearing at their base two erect collateral bottle-shaped orthotropous 
ovules. Fruit a globose or obovoid short-stalked woody strobile, maturing the first year, and persistent 
after the escape of the seeds, formed by the enlargement and coalescence of the flower and the ovu- 
liferous scales abruptly dilated from slender stipes into irregularly four-sided thin disks, conspicuously 
marked when half grown with the reflexed tips of the flower-scales, often mucronulate at maturity, 
furnished on the inner face, especially on the stipes, with numerous large dark glands filled with blood- 
red fragrant liquid resin. Seeds in pairs under each scale, attached laterally to the stipe by large pale 
hilums, erect, unequally three-angled; testa light brown and lustrous, thick, coriaceous or corky, 
produced into three thick unequal lateral wings, and below into a slender elongated pomt. Embryo 
axile in copious fleshy albumen ; cotyledons from four to nine,shorter than the superior radicle. 
1 Taxodium rarely if ever forms a terminal bud in the United 
States, the branches being continued by axillary globose buds, usu- 
ally two in number, produced in summer or autumn in the axils of 
the upper scale-like leaves of leading shoots, and covered with 
numerous loosely imbricated ovate acute carinate scales accrescent 
and persistent during the summer on the base of the branchlet. 
The deciduous lateral branchlets, which continue to appear for 
three or four years, are developed from minute globose buds, cov- 
ered with linear-lanceolate apiculate green leaf-like scales persist- 
ent on the base of the branchlet, and inclosed in two broadly ovate 
rounded concave membranaceous scales ; on the branchlets of the 
year they are produced in the axils of its primary leaves, and in 
succeeding years usually close to the small elevated scars left by 
fallen branchlets. (See Henry, Nov. Act. Acad. Cas. Leop. xix. 
101, t. 14.) 
