CLASS II. 

 GYMNOSPERMS. 



CV. CONIFERJE. 



Trees or shrubs, wood-cells studded with disks. Leaves usually 

 alternate, rigid, linear or subulate, rarely broad, solitary or fas- 

 cicled in membranous sheaths. Flowers monoecious or dioecious ; 

 males in deciduous catkins ; females solitary or in cones. Perianth 

 none. MALE flowers : stamens many, filaments connate in a 

 globose ovoid oblong orcylindric column; anthers 1- or more- celled, 

 shortly stipitate or sessile round the axis of the column. FEMALB 

 flowers : vulos one or more, sessile, naked, usually orthotropous, 

 seated on a scale (an open carpel) which is free or adnate to the 

 scale (bnu'Oof a cone. Seeds often winged, testa thick or thin ; 

 albumen ( use, flesh v ; embryo axile, straight ; cotyledons 2 or 

 more ; ia< i -lo terete, often attached to a crumpled thread-like 

 suspensor. Species about 350, chiefly in cold regions, rare in Trop. 

 Africa and America, absent in the W. Peninsula of Indir and in 

 Ceylon. 



P1NUS, Linn. ; Fl. Brit. Ind. 651. 



Evergreen monoecious trees. Leaves dimorphic, the rrimary 

 consisting of small membranous scales ; secondary linear, in clusters 

 of 2 or 3 or 5 in the axils of the primary, clusters girt at the base 

 by a sheath of hyaline scales. MALE flowers in spikes, frtaminal 

 column ovoid, oblong or cylindric ; anthers in many series, shortly 

 stipitate, 2-celled, connective produced at the apex. FEMALE 

 cones globose or ovoid, bracts spirally imbricate, ovuliferous scale 

 much <argrr than the bracts ; ovules 2, at the base of the scale, 

 reflexed. Ripe cone ovoid or oblong, bracts obsolete or small ; 

 scales persistent, formed of the enlarged thickened usually woody 

 i-v 1 ferou? scales the tips of which are often square and with a 

 boss. Reeds 2, reversed, usually winged, the wing formed by the 

 adhesion < f the hard testa to a thin separable layer of the scale 9 



