62 TAXACEAE (yEW FAMILY) 



Division II. SPERMATOPHYTA 

 (Seed-Plants, Phanerogamia, or Flowering Plants) 



Male generative cells (with rare extra-limital exceptions) passive, 

 developing an elongated tube. Flowers with stamens, or pistils, 

 or both. Normal reproduction by seeds containing an embryo or 

 minute plant. 



TAXACEAE (Yew Family) 



Trees or shrubs, ours with evergreen linear leaves, and dioecious (or more 

 rarely monoecious) ^oiuers (borne on short scaly peduncles), the sterile globular, 

 formed of a few naked stamens with anther-cells under a shield-like somewhat 

 lobed connective, the fertile consisting of an erect ovule, which becomes a bony- 

 coated seed more or less surrounded by a large fleshy disk (or scale). Now gen- 

 erally treated as a family distinct from the Pinaceae. 



1. TAXUS [Tourn.] L. Yew 



Annular disk of the fertile flowers cup-shaped, globular, at length pulpy, 

 red, and berry-like. Cotyledons 2. — Leaves flat, mucronate, rigid, scattered, 2- 

 ranked. (The classical name, probably from to^ov, a bow, the wood anciently 

 used for bows.) 



L T. canadensis Marsh, (American Y., Ground Hemlock.) A low strag- 

 gling bush ; stems diffuse (or rarely arborescent and 2 m. high); leaves linear, 

 green on both sides. — Evergreen woods, Nfd. to Va., la., and Man. 



PINACEAE (Pine Family) 



Trees and shriibs, with resinous juice, mostly awl-shaped or needle-shaped 

 entire leaves, and monoecious or rarely dioecious flowers borne in or having the 

 form of scaly catkins, of which the fertile become cones or berry-like. Ovules 2 

 or more at the base of each scale. Mostly evergreen. In the following treatment 

 the term catkin (or ament) is retained as the most convenient designation for 

 the catkin-like aggregates of scales bearing or inclosing either stamens or ovules. 

 The morphology of the coniferous inflorescence is still doubtful. It seems proba- 

 ble that the staminate catkin is a single flower, but paleophytological evidence 

 suggests that the ovule-bearing cones are inflorescences. 



Tribe I. ABlfeTEAE. Fertile flowers consisting of numerous open spirally imbricated carpels 

 in the form of scales, each scale in the axil of a persistent bract ; in fruit forming a cone. 

 Ovules 2, adherent to the base of each scale, inverted. Seeds winged. Cotyledons 3-16. 

 Anthers spirally arranged upon the staiTiineal column, which is subtended by involucral scales. 

 Buds scaly. Leaves linear to needle-shaped. 



* Leaves in bundles of two or more. 



1. Plnus. Leaves 2-5 in each bundle, evergreen. 



2. Larix. Leaves many in each cluster, deciduous. 



* * Leaves solitary. 

 ■•- Leaves keeled on both surfaces (tetragonal) ; scales of the cone persistent upon the axis. 

 8. Picea. Leaves not 2-ranked. 



-t- ■*- Leaves tlattish, whitened along two lines beneath. 



4. Abies. Cone large (.5-10 cm. long), the scales falling away before the axis, 



5. Tsuga. Cone small {\2-'ii') mm. long), the scales persisting on the axis. 



