1478 The Trees of Great Britain and Ireland 



Short shoots with annual zones of growth, each zone marked by a depression and a 

 ring of subulate scales. Buds of three kinds, as in the larches ; those terminating (a) 

 the long shoots and (d) the short shoots, conic, surrounded by acuminate scales, 

 ending in long subulate points ; and (c) lateral buds, solitary in the axils of a few 

 leaves of the long shoots, globose, with rounded or short-pointed scales. 



Leaves deciduous, solitary and spirally arranged on the long shoots, and in clusters 

 of fifteen to thirty at the apices of the short shoots ; jointed at the base with the 

 tip of a pulvinus, linear, straight or falcate, i|- to 2 in. long, ^ in. broad, acute or 

 acuminate, green and slightly convex above ; under surface with a raised green 

 midrib, two longitudinal channels covered with white stomatic lines, and a narrow 

 thin outer margin. Fibro-vascular bundle undivided ; resin-canals three, all close to 

 the epidermis, one in the median line near the upper surface, and two lateral, near the 

 outer edges of the lower surface. 



Flowers monoecious. Staminate flowers, pendulous, twenty-five to thirty in a 

 cluster, at the apex of a leafless short shoot, each subtended by loose scarious scales, 

 and including the slender stalk about f in. long ; anthers twenty, two-celled, opening 

 transversely ; pollen grains winged as in Pinus, and different from the simple pollen 

 of Larix. Pistillate flowers globose, f in. in diameter, terminating a short leafy 

 branch, which arises from the apex of a short shoot ; ovules, two on each scale, 

 reversed. Cones, erect on the branches, ripening in the autumn of the first year, 

 ovoid, i|- to 2 in. long : scales numerous, imbricated, coriaceous, reddish brown when 

 ripe, f to i|- in. long, ovate, tapering to a blunt, acute, or notched apex, sagittate at 

 the base, with a claw bent upwards at a right angle, which arises by a narrow linear 

 attachment from the axis of the cone : bract, ovate-lanceolate, |^ to ^ in. long, 

 acuminate, denticulate, adnate to the base of the scale, and deciduous with it. Seeds, 

 two on each scale, which they completely cover with their short body and long wing ; 

 wing oval-lanceolate on the outer edge, straight on the inner edge, pale brown, trans- 

 lucent, enclosing the body of the seed on the front and sides in a cavity; body 

 detachable from the wing, white, obovate, with two large resin-vesicles ; cotyledons 

 five to seven. As the cone ripens the scales gape apart, showing the wings of the 

 seeds projecting beyond them, and giving them the appearance of a whitish margin. 

 Soon afterwards the scales, bracts, and seeds fall together to the ground, the central 

 axis of the cone being the only part of it left on the branch, as is the case in Cedrus 

 and Abies. 



This remarkable conifer is a native of the provinces of Chekiang and Kiangsu 

 in eastern China, where it is known from two localities, both in about lat. 29° 30'. 

 Fortune discovered it in 1853, in the mountains south-west of Ningpo, where 

 there were some fine trees growing near the Tsan-tsin monastery^ at 1000 to 

 1500 ft. elevation ; and in 1854 he found a plantation, about twenty miles westward, 

 in the vicinity of the Quan-ting monastery, on a mountain slope at about 4000 ft. 

 altitude, one of the trees, standing alone and clothed with branches to near the 

 ground, being 130 ft. in height and 8 ft. in girth. The Rev. G. E. Moule also found 



1 This monastery is about a day's journey from Ningpo. Cf. Bretschneider, mSf. Etirop. Bot. Disc. China, 416 

 (1898). ' ^ 



