SCIADOPITYS 



Sciadopitys, Siebold et Zuccarini, Fl. Jap. ii. i, tt. loi, 102 (1844); Bentham et Hooker, Gen. PL 

 iii. 437 (1880); Masters, Journ. Linn. Soc. {Bot.) xviiL 502 (1881), xxvii. 276, 320 (1889), 

 JKX. 21 (1893), z.nd Journ. Bot. xxii. 97 (1884). 



An evergreen tree, belonging to the tribe Taxodinese of the order Coniferae, 

 attaining in Japan a height of 120 feet and a girth of 12 feet. Bark reddish brown, 

 scaling off in long strips. Branches sub-verticillate. Branchlets brown, glabrous, 

 bearing minute scales, which represent true leaves, and cladodes, which are long, 

 green, and leaf-like, performing the functions of true leaves, but differing from them 

 in structure. The scales are borne spirally on the internodes, and are dry, brown, 

 membranous, ovate-lanceolate, and decurrent. At the apex of the shoot there is 

 a ring of similar scales, deltoid in shape, and densely pubescent on their inner 

 surface, out of the axils of which arise a whorl of cladodes, ten to thirty in number, 

 spreading all round the branchlet. These are 2 to 5 inches long, averaging 

 \ inch in width, linear, rigid, narrowed towards the base, obtuse and minutely rigid 

 at the apex ; upper surface dark green, shining, with a median groove ; lower surface 

 green on each side of a deep white stomatiferous central furrow. Buds globose, 

 composed of numerous spirally imbricated greenish scales ; terminal bud, at the 

 apex of the shoot, in the centre of the whorl of cladodes, continuing the growth of 

 the main axis in the following year ; a smaller bud, often present at the side of the 

 terminal bud, developing into a lateral branch in the next season. As a rule, the 

 main axis is bare, except for the scales, below the apex, which bears the whorl of 

 cladodes and the buds ; but on strong-growing shoots a lateral branch is occasionally 

 developed half-way up the internode. The cladodes are leaf-like shoots, and 

 not true leaves, each representing an axillary branch with two coherent leaves ; 

 but their true nature has given rise to a great deal of discussion ; and the elaborate 

 papers of Dr. Masters cited above may be consulted on this subject. 



Male flowers in a terminal compact raceme, about an inch in length ; each 

 flower f inch long, subsessile ; anthers numerous, spirally arranged, short-stalked, 

 with an acute and reflexed crest and two pendulous cells, opening by a vertical slit ; 

 pollen-grains globular, minutely tuberculate. Female flowers, terminal small cones 

 composed of spirally arranged lanceolate bracts, which are serially continuous with 

 the true leaves, empty at the base of the cone, higher up with fleshy semi-lunar 

 ovular scales in their axils, half the size of the bracts and bearing one to nine ovules 

 in a transverse series on their inner surface. As the cones increase in size, the 



567 



