PRUMNOPITYS ELEGANS. 



155 



founded the genus Prumnopitys, and in 7 J . spieata, a native of New 

 Zealand, the fruits are pseudo-terminal or sessile on a common rachis. 

 These two species with three others were made sectional by Endlicher 

 under the name of Stachycarpus ; this section is adopted by 

 Bentham and Hooker in the " Genera Plantarum " who include in it- 

 only the two species above named, and the same course is followed 

 by Eichler in Engler and Prantl's " Natiirlichen Pflanzenfamilien " ; 

 Dr. Maxwell Masters has, however, given the section generic rank 

 as Stachycarpus in the " Journal of the Linnean Society," but in 

 the Kew Hand-List, Prumnopitys is retained for the Chilian species 

 and for others in which the " receptaculum " is wanting. 



As Prumnopitys differs from Podocarpus only in the absence of the 

 so-called " receptaculnm " further diagnosis is unnecessary; the name 

 is derived from Trpov/nvo^ (the wild plum) and irirvg (the pine tree). 



Prumnopitys elegans. 



A dioecious tree 40 50 feet high, but frequently much less especially 



at its highest vertical limit, 

 the trunk covered with dark 

 brown bark and much 

 branched from the base 

 upwards. In Great Britain 

 usually a dense, much- 

 brancked shrub of pyramidal 

 or broadly columnar outline. 

 Brandies slender, spreading 

 or ascending and much rami- 

 fied. Branchlets close-set, 

 often pseudo-distichous, 

 opposite, with smooth green 

 bark that changes to brown 

 after the fall of the leaves. 

 Leaves persistent three five 

 years, spirally crowded around 

 the branchlets, sub-distichous 

 on horizontal growths, spread- 

 ing on all sides in the 

 ascending or erect shoots, 

 linear, mucronate, 0*5 1 inch 

 lon<;-, straight or falcately 



curved, dark green above, with the midrib indicated by a sjiallow 

 channel on the older leaves; paler with thickened midrib and margins 

 and with two glaucous stomatif erous bands beneath. Staminate flowers 

 in terminal and axillary racemes, cylindric, obtuse, subtended by a pale 

 green subulate bract ; stamens numerous, spirally and close-set around the 

 axis, sulphur-yellow. ' Fruit about the size of that of the wild Damson 

 (Prunus insititia) which it much resembles in shape and colour, solitary 

 and sessile or pseudo-terminal on short slender branchlets (rachides) on 

 which the leaves are reduced to small acute scales. Seed enclosed in a 



Fig. 54. Prumnopitys elegans. Fruiting branchlet and fruits, 

 nat. size. Communicated by Mr. Coleman, from Eastnor. 



