107 



TAXACB^B. 



TREES or shrubs with homomorphic, rarely dimorphic 

 ramification. Leaves persistent, rarely deciduous. Staminate 

 ti ewers composed of numerous stamens arranged in a globose 

 head or cylindric spike. Ovuliferous flowers composed of few 

 or several imbricated scales that are membraneous or become 

 fleshy, never ligneous. Ovules erect or pendulous surrounded 

 at the base by a fieshy, rarely desiccate arillus which w r holly 

 or in part encloses the ripe seed ; rarely exarillate. Maturation 

 of fruit annual, rarely biennial. 



TRIBE-SALISBURINE^. 



Flowers dioecious, rarely monoecious. Stamens numerous. Ovules- 

 erect. 



Branchlets dimorphic. Leaves deciduous. Stami- 

 nate flowers umbellate - 1. Ginkgo. 

 Branchlets homomorphic. Leaves persistent. 



Staminate flowers crowded ; stamens capitate 2. Cephalotaxus. 



Staminate flowers solitary ; stamens spicate - 3. Torreya. 



GINKGO. 



Linnaeus, Mantissa. II. 313(1771). Parlatore, D. C. Prodr. XVI. 506 (1868). Bentham 

 and Hooker. Gen. Plant. III. 432(1880). Eichler in Engler and Prantl. Nat. Pfl. Fam. 108 

 (1887). Masters in Journ. Linn. Soc. XXX. 3 (1893). 



(Jinkgo is monotypic. The existing species is the sole survivor of an 

 unknown number of others widely dispersed during geological ages over 

 what is now the temperate and colder parts of the northern 

 hemisphere. Fossil remains of Ginkgo have been discovered in systems 

 that were in course of formation at a remote epoch of the Earth's 

 history and which show conclusively that the genus is of astonishing 

 antiquity and that the first appearance of its ancestral form antedates 

 that of every other existing tree by neons of time. The Ginkgo thus 

 presents to us a glimpse of at least one form of vegetation that 

 flourished on the Earth when it was inhabited by unwieldy Icthyosauri, 

 gigainir toads and monster Deinotheriums ages before Man entered 

 upon his inheritance. If the association of the Ginkgo with the remote 

 Past is of a kind to excite wonder, its recent history is scarcely less, a 

 subject for surprise, for the origin of the existing species is shrouded 



