Cunninghamia 495 
An evergreen tree, attaining in China 150 feet in height and 18 feet in girth of 
stem, with brownish bark scaling off in irregular longitudinal plates, and exposing a 
reddish cortex beneath. Branches at first in pseudo-whorls, afterwards given off 
irregularly, Young branchlets sub-opposite or in pseudo-whorls, covered with green 
epidermis ; older shoots brownish except for the green leaf-bases. Leaves persistent 
alive five to seven years, afterwards remaining dry and dead for many years on the 
branches and even upon the stem; densely and spirally arranged on the branchlets, 
but twisted on their bases so as to be thrown into two lateral spreading ranks ; 
narrowed at the base and decurrent on the shoot to the insertion of the next leaf; 
rigid, more or less curved, narrowly lanceolate, acuminate, 1 to 2 inches long; upper 
surface dark green, concave with slightly raised margins ; lower surface convex, with 
a green midrib and two white stomatic bands, the stomata in several regular lines ; 
sharply and finely serrate ; with one resin-canal beneath the single unbranched fibro- 
vascular bundle. 
Staminate flowers, five to ten in an umbel at the apex of a branchlet ; the umbel 
surrounded at its base by numerous triangular imbricated serrulate bracts; each 
flower a spike-like cylindrical column of spirally crowded stamens ; each stamen con- 
sisting of a slender stalk with an ovate serrulate connective, from which hang three 
longitudinally-dehiscing anther-cells. Female flowers, single or three or four together 
at the apex of a branchlet; erect ovoid cones, composed of numerous spirally im- 
bricated lanceolate mucronate bracts in a continuous series with the leaves; lower 
bracts sterile, resembling leaves but with thickened bases; ovular scale on the upper 
fertile bracts visible only as a slight projection; ovules three on the base of each 
bract, reversed. 
Fruit, an ovoid-globose brownish cone, about 14 inch long, composed of thin 
woody scales, which are the bracts of the flowers increased in size and hardened, but 
otherwise little altered; loosely imbricated, serrate in margin, broadly ovate or 
reniform, with a cusped apex often reflected outwards. Seed-scale visible only as 
a transverse narrow membranous fimbriated projection on the inner surface of the 
woody bract, below its centre and above the seeds. Seeds three on each bract, 
about } inch long, brown, oblong compressed, surrounded by a membranous narrow 
wing. Cotyledons two. The cones persist for a year or more on the branchlets 
after the escape of the seed; and are occasionally proliferous, the elongated shoot 
above the cone producing leaves and growing to be several inches in length.’ 
Seedling.—Seedlings sown at Colesborne in spring were about 3 inches high 
in August, and had a short flexuose tap-root, provided with a few lateral fibres. 
Caulicle brownish, terete, glabrous, 1 inch long. Cotyledons two, about } inch long, 
coriaceous, entire, linear, with a median groove beneath. Young stem glabrous, 
ridged by the decurrent bases of the leaves. Leaves numerous, spirally arranged 
on the stem, $ to 1} inch long, soft in texture, linear, curved, broad at the base, 
whence they taper gradually to a fine bristle-pointed apex, serrulate in margin, green 
above, marked beneath with two narrow white stomatic bands. 
In Cunninghamia, as in Araucaria, root-suckers are often produced, which grow 
1 Cf. Woods and Forests, 1884, p. 593, and Garden, xxix. 173 (1886). 
