Cunninghamia 495 



An evergreen tree, attaining in China 150 feet in height and 18 feet in girth of 

 stem, with brownish bark scaling off in irregular longitudinal plates, and exposing a 

 reddish cortex beneath. Branches at first in pseudo-whorls, afterwards given off 

 irregularly. Young branchlets sub-opposite or in pseudo-whorls, covered with green 

 epidermis ; older shoots brownish except for the green leaf-bases. Leaves persistent 

 alive five to seven years, afterwards remaining dry and dead for many years on the 

 branches and even upon the stem ; densely and spirally arranged on the branchlets, 

 but twisted on their bases so as to be thrown into two lateral spreading ranks ; 

 narrowed at the base and decurrent on the shoot to the insertion of the next leaf ; 

 rigid, more or less curved, narrowly lanceolate, acuminate, i to 2 inches long ; upper 

 surface dark green, concave with slightly raised margins ; lower surface convex, with 

 a green midrib and two white stomatic bands, the stomata in several regular lines ; 

 sharply and finely serrate ; with one resin-canal beneath the single unbranched fibro- 

 vascular bundle. 



Staminate flowers, five to ten in an umbel at the apex of a branchlet ; the umbel 

 surrounded at its base by numerous triangular imbricated serrulate bracts ; each 

 flower a spike-like cylindrical column of spirally crowded stamens ; each stamen con- 

 sisting of a slender stalk with an ovate serrulate connective, from which hang three 

 longitudinally-dehiscing anther-cells. Female flowers, single or three or four together 

 at the apex of a branchlet ; erect ovoid cones, composed of numerous spirally im- 

 bricated lanceolate mucronate bracts in a continuous series with the leaves ; lower 

 bracts sterile, resembling leaves but with thickened bases ; ovular scale on the upper 

 fertile bracts visible only as a slight projection ; ovules three on the base of each 

 bract, reversed. 



Fruit, an ovoid-globose brownish cone, about i^^ inch long, composed of thin 

 woody scales, which are the bracts of the flowers increased in size and hardened, but 

 otherwise little altered ; loosely imbricated, serrate in margin, broadly ovate or 

 reniform, with a cusped apex often reflected outwards. Seed-scale visible only as 

 a transverse narrow membranous fimbriated projection on the inner surface of the 

 woody bract, below its centre and above the seeds. Seeds three on each bract, 

 about I inch long, brown, oblong compressed, surrounded by a membranous narrow 

 wing. Cotyledons two. The cones persist for a year or more on the branchlets 

 after the escape of the seed ; and are occasionally proliferous, the elongated shoot 

 above the cone producing leaves and growing to be several inches in length.' 



Seedling. Seedlings sown at Colesborne in spring were about 3 inches high 

 in August, and had a short flexuose tap-root, provided with a few lateral fibres. 

 Caulicle brownish, terete, glabrous, i inch long. Cotyledons two, about | inch long, 

 coriaceous, entire, linear, with a median groove beneath. Young stem glabrous, 

 ridged by the decurrent bases of the leaves. Leaves numerous, spirally arranged 

 on the stem, ^ to i^ inch long, soft in texture, linear, curved, broad at the base, 

 whence they taper gradually to a fine bristle-pointed apex, serrulate in margin, green 

 above, marked beneath with two narrow white stomatic bands. 



In Cunninghamia, as in Araucaria, root-suckers are often produced, which grow 



1 Cf. Woods and Fortsts, 1884, p. 593, and Garden, xxix. 173 (1886). 



