PODOCARPUS. 147 



for ship and boat building, it has greatly diminished in numbers 

 since its first discovery by Allan Cunningham in 1817. The wood 

 is close-grained, easily worked, burns briskly, giving out a pleasant 

 aromatic fragrance, and is used for every purpose for which coniferous 

 timber is in request. 



Dacrydium Franklinii is described by those who have seen it in 

 its native country as a noble tree of broadly pyramidal outline, with 

 drooping branchlets clothed with foliage of the brightest green. It 

 was introduced into British gardens many years ago and has proved to 

 be fairly hardy in the south and south-west of England and Ireland, 

 but always forming a shrub of irregular habit of which the primary 

 branches are covered with light red-brown bark, and the brauchlets 

 slender, sometimes much elongated, drooping or quite pendulous. The 

 tree was named in compliment to Sir John Franklin, Governor of 

 Tasmania at the time of Captain Ross' Antarctic expedition " for his 

 zealous co-operation in all the objects of the expedition, and for his 

 mi wearied zeal in forwarding the cause of science in that colony." 



PODOCAKPUS. 



L'Heritier, MS. (1788) nov. gen. ex typo. Taxi elongatae, ex L. C. Richard Mem. sur 

 les Coriif. 13, t. 1 (1826). Endlicher, Synops. Conif. 206 (1847). Parlatore, D. C. Prodr. 

 XVI. 507 (1868). Bentham and Hooker, Gen. Plant. III. 434 (1881). Eicliler in Engler and 

 Prantl, Nat. Pfl. Fam. 104 (1887). Masters in Journ. Linn. Soc. XXX. 9 (1893). 



A genus of evergreen trees and shrubs dispersed over the tropical 

 and sub-tropical regions of both hemispheres including Japan and 

 New Zealand, the last named group of islands numbering seven 

 species in its flora, but 'absent from the Mediterranean region and 

 sub-tropical North America. The essential characters may be thus 

 formulated : 



Flowers monoecious or dioecious, axillary or sub-terminal. Stamiiiate 

 flowers solitary or fascicled on a common peduncle, surrounded at the 

 base by a few imbricated bracts. Stamens spirally crowded. Anthers 

 two lobed. 



Ovuliferous flowers pedunculate, solitary or in pairs, surrounded at 

 the base by a few bracts which together with the raphe of the ovule, 

 the peduncle and the outer coat of the seed become fleshy. Ovule 

 solitary and anatropous. 



Fruit small, globose or ovoid with a fleshy pericarp seated on a 

 fleshy receptacle. 



Leaves variable in shape and attachment, opposite, alternate or 

 scattered ; linear or oblong with a single median nerve- or with 

 parallel- veins as in Podocarpus Nageia] sometimes dimorphic on 

 the same branch. 



Upwards of seventy species of Podocarpus have been described by 

 different authors, but more than one -third of them are but very 

 imperfectly known, owing doubtless to the remoteness of their 

 habitats and the difficulty of obtaining satisfactory specimens, 

 especially of the flowers and fruits, for critical examination and 



