CONIFER-®.
133
LIBOCEDRUS.
Flowers naked, monoecious or dioecious, terminal, solitary; stamens numerous, inmany ranks, decussately opposite; anther-cells usually 4 ; scales of the pistillate flower4 or 6, acuminate ; ovules 2. Fruit a strobile maturing in one season. Leavesdimorphic, persistent.
Libocedrus, Endlicher, Syn. Conif. 42 (1847) ; Gen. Suppl. Heyderia, K. Koch, Dendr. ii. pt. ii. 177 (1873).iv. pt. ii. 3. — Bentham & Hooker, Gen. iii. 426. — Eichler, Calocedrus, Kurz, Jour. Bot. xi. 196 (1873).
Engler & Prantl Pflanzenfam. ii. pt. i. 95. — Masters, Thuya, Baillon, Hist. PI. xii. 34 (in part) (not Linnaeus )Jour. Linn. Soc. xxx. 19. (1892).
Resinous aromatic trees, with scaly bark, soft straight-grained durable fragrant wood, spreadingbranches, flattened brancblets disposed in one horizontal plane forming an open distichous spray, andoften ultimately deciduous, naked buds, and fibrous roots. Leaves scale-like, opposite, imbricated infour ranks, glandular or eglandular on the back, entire with thin cartilaginous margins, persistent; onleading shoots nearly equally decussate, closely appressed or spreading, often remote by the lengtheningof the nodes, dying and becoming woody before falling; on lateral flattened branchlets those of thelateral ranks much compressed, conspicuously carinate and nearly covering those of the other ranks;on seedling plants linear-lanceolate and spreading. Flowers appearing in winter or very early springfrom buds formed the previous autumn, monoecious, with those of the two sexes on different branchletsor dioecious, solitary, terminal. Staminate flower subsessile, globose or ovoid; stamens from twelve. to sixteen, decussately opposite on a slender axis; filaments short, dilated into scale-like broadly ovateor orbicular eccentrically peltate connectives bearing usually four subglohose two-valved anther-cellsopening on the hack; pollen-grains simple. Pistillate flower subglohose, ovoid or oblong, terminal ona short lateral branchlet, often subtended by several pairs of leaf-like scales slightly enlarged andpersistent under the fruit, composed of four or rarely of six decussately opposite scales, acuminate withlong or short points; scales of the upper or of the middle rank much longer than those of the lowerrank, ovate or oblong, fertile, bearing at the base on a minute accrescent ovuliferous scale two erectcollateral orthotropous ovules. Fruit maturing in one season, ovoid or oblong, surrounded at thebase by the somewhat enlarged upper leaves of the branchlet, persistent after the discharge of theseeds until the following season, its scales subcoriaceous, marked at the apex by the free slightlythickened mueronulate border of the enlarged flower-scale; the lowest pair thin, ovate, reflexed, muchshorter than the oblong or ovate thickened woody scales of the second rank widely spreading atmaturity; those of the third rank, when present, confluent into an erect woody septum. Seeds inpairs or solitary by abortion, erect, oblong-lanceolate, compressed; testa coriaceous, produced intolateral membranaceous wings, the one narrow, the other broad, oblique and nearly as long as thescale, free, or united, with a conspicuous suture; embryo axile in fleshy albumen ; cotyledons two,radicle cylindrical, superior.
Eight species of Libocedrus, which is perhaps too closely connected with Thuya to he con-sidered generically distinct, are now distinguished; one is widely scattered through the mountainforests of western North America ; two inhabit western South America , where they are distributed fromChib to Patagonia; two occur in New Zealand , two in New Caledonia , 1 and one in southwestern
1 Libocedrus austro-caledonica, Brongniart & Gris, Bull. Soc. ii. 32 ( Records of Observations on Sir W. McGregor's Highland-Bot. France , xviii. 140 (1871), and Plants from New Guinea ') (1889). — Beissner, Handb. Nadelh. 31.
Libocedrus Papuana, F. Mueller, Trans. R. Soc. Victoria, i. pt.