CUNNINGHAMIA. 291 



TRIBE-ARAUCARINE^. 



Flowers monoecious or dioecious. Staminate flowers umbellate or 

 solitary, terminal or axillary. Stamens mostly pendulous and free, with 

 3 12 or more longitudinally dehiscent anther cells. Cones with the 

 scales spirally arranged, in the two-fold structure of which the bract 

 greatly predominates ; the ovuliferous scale confluent and reduced to an 

 inconspicuous cellular projection. Seeds pendulous, free or concrescent 

 with the scale. 



Flowers monoecious. 



Staminate flowers umbellate and terminal. 



Seeds 3, pendulous and free 11. Cunninghamia. 



Staminate flowers solitary and axillary. 



Seeds solitary, free - - 12. Agathis. 

 Flowers dioecious, rarely monoecious. 

 Staminate flowers solitary or clustered. 



Seeds solitary, concrescent with the scale - 13. Araucaria. 



CUNNINGHAMIA. 



Robert Brown ex L. C. Richard, Mem. sur les Conif. 80, t. 18 (1826). Endlicher, 

 Syiiops. Conif. 193 (1847). Parlatore, D. C. Prodr. XVI. 432 (1868). Bentham and 

 Hooker, Gen. Plant. III. 435. Eichler in Engler and Prantl, Nat. Pfl. Fam. 85 (1887). 

 Masters in Journ. Linn. Soc. XXX. 25 (1893). 



A monotypic genus founded by Dr. Kobert Brown in 1826 upon an 

 herbarium specimen brought from China by Sir George Staunton in 

 1795, which Lambert had figured and described under the name of 

 Pinus lanceolata, a genus so evidently unsuited for its reception that 

 E. A. Salisbury, so early as 1807; proposed a new genus for it which 

 he named Belis. This, however, was not taken up on account of its 

 close resemblance to Bellis used for the Daisies, and Brown's name, 

 given in compliment to James Cunningham, the original discoverer of 

 this remarkable tree, has been universally adopted. 



The botanical affinity of the Cunninghamia remained a long time 

 doubtful. Endlicher placed it in the Abietineae with Athrotaxis and 

 Sequoia ; Parlatore removed it to the Taxodinese in which he is followed 

 by Eichler ; Bentham and Hooker, however, joined it with Araucaria and 

 Agathis in which it agrees in the bracts of the ovuliferous flowers being 

 in continuous series with the leaves, and its cones in like manner being 

 chiefly composed of bracts. Moreover, in the subordinate characters of 

 foliage, branching and general habit, the Cunninghamia approaches more 

 closely the Araucarias (section Colymbea) than any other genus. 



The Cunninghamia is of geological antiquity. Remains of cones and 

 foliage closely resembling those of the living species have been found in 

 the lower Tertiary strata. 



