

TAXACE.E 93 



points, l'-3|' long, yV-i' wide. Flowers appearing in March and April; male with broadly 

 ovate acute scales; female nearly \' long, with oblong-ovate rounded scales. Seed ovoid or 

 oblong-ovoid, l'-l|' long, light green more or less streaked with purple. 



A tree, 50-70 but occasionally 100 high, with a trunk l-2 or rarely 4 in diameter, 

 and whorls of spreading slender slightly pendulous branches forming a handsome pyram- 

 idal and in old age a round-topped head. Bark \'-\' thick, gray-brown tinged with 

 orange color, deeply and irregularly divided by broad fissures into narrow ridges covered 

 with elongated loosely appressed plate-like scales. Wood light, soft, close-grained, clear 

 light yellow, with thin nearly white sap wood; occasionally used for fence-posts. 



Distribution. Borders of mountain streams, California, nowhere common but widely 

 distributed from Mendocino County to the Santa Cruz Mountains in the coast region and 

 along the western slopes of the Sierra Nevada from Eldorado to Tulare Counties at alti- 

 tudes of 3000-5000 above the sea; most abundant and of its largest size on the northern 

 coast ranges. 



Rarely cultivated as an ornamental tree in California and western Europe. 



2. TAXUS L. Yew. 



Trees or shrubs, with brown or dark purple scaly bark, and spreading usually horizontal 

 branches. Leaves flat, often falcate, gradually narrowed at the base, dark green, smooth 

 and keeled on the upper surface, paler, papillate, and stomatiferous on the lower surface, 

 their margins slightly thickened and revolute. Flowers dioecious or monoecious: the male 

 composed of a slender stipe bearing at the apex a globular head of 4-8 pale yellow stamens 

 consisting of 4-6 conic pendant pollen-sacs peltately connate from the end of a short 

 filament; the female sessile in the axils of the upper scale-like bracts of a short axillary 

 branch, the ovule erect, sessile on a ring-like disk, ripening in the autumn into an ovoid- 

 oblong seed gradually narrowed and short-pointed at apex, marked at base by the much- 

 depressed hilum, about \' long, entirely or nearly surrounded by but free from the now 

 thickened succulent translucent sweet scarlet aril-like disk of the flower open at apex; 

 seed-coat thick, of two layers, the outer thin and membranaceous or fleshy, the inner much 

 thicker and somewhat woody; albumen uniform. 



Taxus with six or seven species, which can be distinguished only by their leaf characters 

 and habit, is widely distributed through the northern hemisphere, and is found in eastern 

 North America where two species occur, in Pacific North America, Mexico, Europe, north- 

 ern Africa, western and southern Asia, China, and Japan. Of the exotic species the Euro- 

 pean, African, and Asiatic Taxus baccata L., and its numerous varieties, is often cultivated 

 in the United States, especially in the more temperate parts of the country, and is replaced 

 with advantage by the hardier Taxus cuspidata S. & Z., of eastern Asia in the northern 

 states, where the native shrubby Taxus canadensis Marsh, with monoecious flowers is 

 sometimes cultivated. 



Taxus, from rd^'os, is the classical name of the Yew-tree. 



CONSPECTUS OF THE NORTH AMERICAN ARBORESCENT SPECIES. 



Leaves usually short, yellow-green. 1. T. brevifolia (G). 



Leaves elongated, usually falcate, dark green. 2. T. floridana (C). 



1. Taxus brevifolia Nutt. Yew. 



Leaves |'-1' long, about -jV wide, dark yellow-green above, rather paler below, with 

 stout midribs, and slender yellow petioles ^V long, persistent for 5-12 years. Flowers 

 and fruit as in the genus. 



A tree, usually 40-50 but occasionally 70-80 high, with a tall straight trunk l-2 

 or rarely 4^ in diameter, frequently unsymmetrical, with one diameter much exceeding 

 the other, and irregularly lobed, with broad rounded lobes, and long slender horizontal or 

 slightly pendulous branches forming a broad open conical head. Bark about \' thick 



