]98 A MANUAL OP THE CONIFERS. 



Tribe II.— TAXODL30. The Deciduous Cypress Group. 

 The Taxodias include a group of trees presenting much diversity 

 in their general aspect, but agreeing in the following particulars: — 



Their trunks are tall* and erect, and furnished with branches, 

 short in proportion to the height of the tree; their habit is 

 pyramidal or conical during their young state, and till they 

 attain maturity, when their lower branches are generally cast off. 



Their flowers are monoecious, that is, the pollen bearing and 



ovule bearing catkins are produced on the same tree; the fertile 



cones consist of numerous hard ligneous scales spirally arranged 



round a common axis, each scale bearing from three to nine 



seeds, according to the kind. . 



The Taxodise may, therefore, be regarded as occupying in some 



measure, an intermediate position between the Abietineas and Cupres- 



sineee, approaching the former in their vegetation, and the latter 



in their fructification. Their foliage is of various forms, some of 



which are peculiar, and differ not less strikingly, inter se, than from 



those of every other family of Coniferous trees. Two of the members 



of the group, Taxodium and Glyptostrobus, are deciduous, all the 



others are evergreen. 



The Tribe includes six or seven genera, none of which consists of 

 more than two or three species; they are polymorphous, and several 

 varieties of the species that have been longest under cultivation have 

 been introduced into gardens. "With the exception of Taxodium 

 distichum, which has an extensive range in the southern portion of 

 North America, the habitat of all the species is confined to three 

 separate and remote regions in western North America, eastern Asia, 

 and Tasmania.f The Sequoias occur in isolated districts in California; 



* Athrotaxis is an exception in this respect. 



+ It was not always so. The fossil remains of a species of Sequoia closely allied to the 

 Wellingtonia, have been found at Bovey Tracey, in Devonshire, and in the Gault beds of 

 Folkestone. There is evidence to show that the Taxodise at one period of the Earth's 

 History were widely distributed, and formed a far more important element in the vegeta- 

 tion of the globe than they do at the present day ; and that we may regard those species 

 still existing only in isolated spots, and which comprise, relatively speaking, individuals 

 not indefinitely numerous, as surviving remnants of a remote past vegetation that are 

 gradually passing away to give place to newer forms, but which may be preserved for 

 any length of time by the hand of Man. 



