SEQUOIA. 269 



SEQUOIA. 



Endlicher, Synops. Couif. 197 (1847). Parlatore, D. C. Prodr. XVI. 435 (1868) 

 Benthani and Hooker, Gen. Plant. III. 429 (1881). Eichler in Engler and Prantl, Nat. 

 Pfl. Fam. 85 (1887). Masters in Journ. Linn. Soc. XXX. 22 (1893). 



Different as the Redwood and Wellingtonia as seen in Great Britain 

 appear to the ordinary observer, botanists are agreed that they must 

 come under the same genus. The difference in habit and foliage, so 

 manifest in this country, is, however, by no means so apparent in the 

 full-grown trees in the California!! forests, and more than this, the 

 structure of their staminate and ovuliferous flowers and their cones is- 

 identical. The genus therefore includes two species having in common 

 the following essential characters : 



Flowers monoecious, solitary and terminal. Staminate flowers stipitate,. 

 ovoicl-cylindric, surrounded at the base by numerous imbricated, involucral 

 bracts. Stamens numerous, spirally crowded, with a short spreading 

 filament dilated into a sub-peltate connective bearing two five (usually 

 three) anther cells. 



Ovuliferous flowers ovoid-cylindrie, composed of numerous spirally 

 imbricated ovate bracts keeled at the back, the keel produced into a short 

 elongated point ; the bracts aduate to the shorter and thicker ovuliferous 

 scales which bear five seven ovules that are at first erect but which 

 ultimately become inverted. 



Strobiles sub-cylindric, pendulous, maturing the first year, composed of 



spirally arranged scales that are contracted at the base and clavately 



thickened upwards into a flattened rugose disk with a transverse median 



depression, each bearing five seven pendulous seeds. 



The Redwood was originally joined with Taxodiimi from which it 



was separated by Endlicher, who founded upon it the genus Sequoia, 



and Lindley proposed Wellingtonia for the " Big Trees " of the 



Sierra Nevada, but which was soon rejected when the reproductive 



organs became known. From Taxodium the Sequoias are clearly 



distinguished by their simple, not panicled staminate flowers, by the 



peltate form of their fruit scales which bear a larger number of 



seeds, and by their persistent foliage. 



Besides their gigantic proportions, the Sequoias possess a separate and 

 special interest in respect of their antiquity, and the far more important 

 place they occupied in. the arborescent vegetation of the Earth in past 

 geological ages than at the present time. The earliest remains of the 

 ancient Sequoias occur in the Lower Chalk formations ; they became 

 more plentiful in succeeding strata up to ' the Tertiary systems in 

 which they are widely diffused. It is highly interesting to learn that 

 in the earlier Tertiary formation termed the Eocene, the Sequoias 

 were represented in Great Britain by more than one well-marked 

 species. In the succeeding period termed the Miocene, their fossils are 

 widely distributed over the eastern continent from high latitudes 

 southwards to the great chains of mountains which stretch across the 

 continent from Spain to northern India, and in an east and west 



