TAXODIUM
- Taxodium, Richard, Ann. Mus. Par. xvi. 298 (1810); Bentham et Hooker, Gen. Pl. iii. 429 (1880); Masters, Jour. Linn. Soc. (Bot.) xxx. 24 (1893).
- Schubertia, Mirbel, Nouv. Bull. Soc. Philom. iii. 123 (1812).
- Glyptostrobus, Endlicher, Syn. Conif. 30 (1847).
Deciduous or subevergreen trees, several extinct species and a series of living forms, which have been variously considered to constitute one, two, or three species, belonging to the tribe Taxodinese of the order Coniferse.
Branchlets of two kinds, those at the apex of the shoot persistent, and bearing axillary buds, those lower down on the shoot deciduous and without buds. Buds of two kinds: those near the apex of the shoot, two in number, sub-terminal, globose, composed of imbricated, ovate, acute, keeled scales; these buds continue the growth of the persistent shoot. The lateral buds, situated lower on the shoot, are minute globose swellings, enclosed in two transverse, broadly oval, concave, membranous scales, which do not meet. These buds produce the deciduous branchlets, and are developed both on older and current year's shoots, in the latter case arising in the axils of primary leaves.
Leaves inserted spirally on the branchlets; on the persistent shoots, spreading more or less radially; on the deciduous shoots, in the usual forms of the species, thrown by a twisting of their bases into two lateral ranks, thus assuming a pseudodistichous arrangement; linear, acute, channelled along the median line above, keeled and bearing stomata below. In var. imbricaria the leaves are not pseudodistichously arranged, but are appressed around the twig and spreading at their free apex; they are narrow, long-pointed, concave above.
Flowers monœcious. Male flowers in panicles, 3 to 5 inches long, arising at the end of the preceding year's shoot. Each flower is minute, sub-sessile, and consists of a stalk surrounded at its base by ovate scales, and bearing 6 to 8 distichously opposite stamens. Female flowers, scattered near the ends of branchlets of the preceding year, solitary, globular, consisting of numerous imbricated pointed bracts, adnate below to the thickened fleshy scales, each of which bears two ovules.
Fruit, a globular or ellipsoidal, short-stalked, woody cone, an inch or more in diameter, ripening in the first year, composed of thick coriaceous peltate scales, the stipes of which are slender and spring off at right angles from the axis of the cone; the discs, rhomboidal in shape, show a triangular scar at the base, above which they are irregularly crenulate and rugose. The bract having almost entirely coalesced
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