TORREYA 







Torreya^ Arnott, in Ann. Nat. Hist. i. 130 (1838); Bentham et Hooker, Gen. PL iii. 431 (1880); 



Eichler, in Engler and Prantl, Pftanzenfam. ii. 1, p. m (1889); Masters, in Journ. Linn. 



Soe. (Pot.) xxx. 5 (1893); Pilger, in Engler, PJianzenreich, iv. 5, Taxacea, 105 (1903); 



Sargent, in Pot. Gaz. xliv. 226 (1907). 

 Tumion, Rafinesque, Amenities of Nature, 63 (1840); Sargent, Silva N. Amer. x. 55 (1896). 

 Caryotaxus, Zuccarini, ex Endlicher, Syn. Com/. 241 (1847). 



Evergreen trees belonging to the order Taxacese, with fissured bark and opposite 

 or whorled branches. Young branchlets green, with linear pulvini, separated by 

 slight grooves. Buds, one terminal, and occasionally two to four lateral, clustered at 

 the end of the branchlet, composed of a few decussately opposite scales. Base of the 

 branchlet marked with scars, left by the fall of the bud-scales of the previous season ; 

 occasionally two or three of these persisting brown, unenlarged, and inconspicuous. 

 Leaves spirally arranged, but thrown, by twisting and turning of their bases, into a 

 pectinate arrangement on lateral branches, as in the yew ; persistent three or four 

 years ; stalked, linear, tipped with a bristle -like cartilaginous point ; upper surface 

 green, convex ; lower surface with a raised green midrib, and two white stomatic 

 bands, sunk in longitudinal depressions ; fibro - vascular bundle undivided, with a 

 solitary resin-canal beneath it. 



Flowers dioecious, or monoecious 2 with the sexes on different branches. Staminate 

 flowers solitary in the axils of the leaves of the current year's branchlet, surrounded 

 at the base by several pairs of decussate scales, composed of numerous stamens, in 

 whorls of fours, on a stipitate slender axis ; filament expanded into four pollen-sacs ; 

 connective truncate or crest-like and dentate. 



Pistillate flowers in pairs on rudimentary branchlets, 3 which are solitary in the 

 axils of a few leaves towards the base of the current year's shoot ; each flower sub- 

 tended by four decussate scales and a bract, and consisting of a solitary terminal 

 ovule, surrounded at the base by a small disc, the aril, which grows upwards and 

 ultimately becomes confluent with the succulent testa of the seed. Seed, as only one 

 flower of each pair develops, solitary ; ripening in the second year, drupe-like, with 

 an outer succulent resinous coat and an inner woody shell, within which is the 

 ruminate albumen and a minute embryo with two cotyledons. The shell bears a 

 slightly projecting point at the apex, around which there is a dark-coloured oval, 



1 According to the Vienna rules of nomenclature, the name Torreya is to be retained for this genus. It had previously 

 been applied to a species of Clerodendron by Sprengel, Neue Enid. ii. 121 (1821). 



2 The flowers are usually said to be dicecious, but the trees in cultivation are moncecious. 



3 This occasionally terminates in a third ovule, or produces an extra bract. Cf. Miss Robertson, in New Phytologist, iii. 

 142 (1904). 



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