418 TAXINEAE [CH. 



cannot therefore be interpreted as indicative of affinity to Taxus. 

 Taxites has also been applied to fossil wood believed to belong to 

 Conifers allied to Taxus or other members of the Taxeae, but this 

 name has been superseded by Taxoxylon. Taxites is misleading 

 in its implication of relationship as the specimens so named afford 

 no proof of their systematic position within the Coniferales. Halle 1 

 has proposed to employ the generic name Elatodadus for sterile 

 shoots of the Taxites type, the latter name being restricted to 

 fossils which there are good grounds for assigning to the Taxeae. 

 Among other genera to which authors have referred vegetative 

 shoots superficially similar to Taxus is Palissya 2 , a genus founded 

 in part on a definite type of reproductive shoot very different from 

 that of Taxus. The investigation of the epidermal structure of 

 some specimens of Jurassic age placed by Feistmantel in Palissya 

 has led Miss Holden to institute a new genus Retinosporites 3 based 

 on characters recognisable only in the case of fossils which retain 

 their cuticular features. Another example of foliage-shoots of the 

 Taxites habit, which are shown by their fertile shoots to have no 

 connexion with the Taxeae, is Stachyotaxus*. Taxites should be 

 retained for fertile branches or reproductive organs which there is 

 some good reason for believing to be more closely related to Taxux 

 than to any other genus. So far as I am aware, none of the. 

 specimens described as species of Taxites supply sufficient justifica- 

 tion for being so designated. Fragments of sterile shoots from 

 the Miocene beds of Western Greenland described by Heer 5 as 

 Taxites Olriki and now in the Dublin Museum afford no proof of 

 close affinity to Taxus : the leaves are rather larger than those of 

 Sequoiites Langsdorfii and not decurrent. 



The generic names Cephalotaxites and Cephalotaxopsis applied 

 by Heer 6 and Fontaine 7 respectively to foliage-shoots resembling 

 those of recent species of Cephalotaxus suggest an affinity that is 

 not supported by data based on reproductive shoots. While such 

 a designation as Cephalotaxopsis may be used without a definite 

 implication of relationship to the recent genus, Cephalotaxites, 

 like Torreyites and Taxites, is more appropriately restricted to 



1 HaUe (13 2 ) p. 83. 2 See page 426. 3 See page 432. 4 See page 410. 



5 Heer (68) p. 95, PI. i. figs. 2124; PI. XLV. fig. 1. 



6 Ibid. (83), p. 10. 7 Fontaine (89) B. p. 235. 



