75 
Female ‘ Flower ’ in Coniferae. 
It is highly interesting, as indicating a reversion to the ancestral 
condition exhibited in modern Cycads, that Torreya has been 
known to produce, besides the lateral secondary axes, a 
‘ flower ’ terminal to the primary axis. This latter fact, and 
the presence of the sterile bracts in the ‘ flowers/ clearly shows 
the Taxeae to be one of the very oldest groups of the order. 
In Cephalotaxus ‘the normal flower consists of two lateral . . . 
carpels formed of ovules pure and simple, accompanied usually 
by a median third, but sterile, carpel. In the Podocarpeae 
the flower has been reduced to a single axial appendage, i.e. 
to an ovular carpel, and at the same time to an ovule actually 
axillary, and often carried up upon a bract.’ In the Arau- 
carieae the structure is the same (Fig. 2). In the Abietineae 
the seminiferous scale is ‘ a symphyllodial structure, consisting 
of three fused appendages [two in Piced\ of an axis, of which 
the two lateral are fertile carpels [reduced to sporangia] fused 
together to form the ‘ crista ’ of the seminiferous scale, while 
the third median leaf—the median knob of the first rudiment 
—remains sterile, and either aborts or, fused with the two 
other fertile carpels, forms the keel and mucro (in Pinus ).’ 
In the Taxodineae and Cupressineae the structure is essentially 
the same. 
The modifications which have in later times supervened 
amongst the Coniferae have been, firstly, the relegation of the 
flowers from the terminal, as in Cycads, to the axillary posi¬ 
tion, as in Gmkgo ; secondly, the supplanting of the herma¬ 
phrodite by the diclinous condition, while finally, in some 
groups, the female came to belong to a different rank of 
branching from that of the male ‘ flowers ’; and, thirdly, the 
adoption by the sporophyll, in many cases, of a bilateral 
instead of a radial symmetry. 
The structure which prevails throughout the Coniferae is 
found to be uniform with that prevailing in the other two 
groups of Gymnosperms. In the Cycads the sporophylls, 
with the exception of those of the female plant of Cycas , still 
retain in part their radial symmetry, while the sporangia possess 
a holochlamydeous or double integument. In the Gnetaceae 
