4:8 HOUGH'S AMERICAN WOODS. 



about this shell is a complete circle of "sprouts" ranging from a few 

 inches to three or four feet in diameter. More than likely this gigantic 

 stump, though seemingly of a single tree, was at one time the common 

 base of a group of trees, as two or more are not infrequently found grow- 

 ing so close together that the bases are united and give the appearance 

 of being a single trunk there, though distinct above. 



GENUS TAXUS, TOURNEFOT. 



Leaves evergreen, flat, more or less rigid, mucronate, mostly scattered, long per- 

 sisting upon the branclilets and forming flat, two-ranked sprays; buds scaly. Flowers 

 dioecious (sometimes monoecious) axillary, from scaly buds, without floral envelopes; 

 the staininate aments small globose or elongated, enveloped at the base with the im- 

 bricated bud-scales and consisting of a few (usually 8 or 10) naked stamens ; anther- 

 cells 5-9, longitudinally dehiscent and attached to the under side of the peltate, 

 somewhat lobed connective; pollen globose; pistillate flowers on short scaly peduncles 

 and consisting each of a naked, erect ovule, sessile upon an annular disk which 

 becomes if Fruit a fleshy red berry-like cup surrounding and nearly enclosing the 

 free small bony seed which contains farinaceous albumen and two cotyledons. 



Trees and shrubs mostly of temperate and cool regions, and name supposed to be 

 taken from the Greek rokov, a bow, for which the very elastic wood of these trees 

 is peculiarly suited. 



144. TAXUS BREVIFOLIA, NUTT. 

 PACIFIC YEW, CALIFORNIA OR OREGON YEW. 



Calif ornianischer Eibenbaum ; Fr., If de Calif ornie ; Sp., Tejo de 



California. 



SPECIFIC CHARACTERS. Leaves linear, \-\ in. long, cuspidate, margins somewhat 

 revolute (strongly so when dry) bright green above, glaucous beneath, furnished 

 with a short petiole. Staminate amentt* about in. long when fully expanded. Fruit 

 with coral-red, somewhat translucent flattened cup ; seed 2-4 lines long, somewhat 

 compressed and 3-angled above, acute and terminated by the micropyle, minutely 

 roughened. 



(The specific name, brevifolia, is from the Latin brevis, short, and folium, leaf.) 



The Yew of the Pacific coast is of rather open loose pyramidal habit 

 of growth, with long horizontal and deflected lower branches and droop- 

 ing branchlets. It occasionally attains the hight of 75 or 80 ft. (24 m.) 

 with a trunk 2 or 3 ft. (0.90 m.) in diameter, clothed in a very thin reddish- 

 brown bark, which checks with age and the outer layer exfoliates in fi- 

 brous strips, or flakes off in irregular scales, the outlines of which are in- 

 dicated in the remaining bark by raised lines about the places from which 

 they came. 



HABITAT. From the Santa Cruz Mountains, and the vicinity of the 

 Yosemite Valley in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, northward to the islands 

 and Coast Ranges of British Columbia, and eastward as a shrub to Idaho 

 and Montana. It attains its greatest development in western Oregon, 



