2. TAXUS L. Yew.

Trees or shrubs, with brown or dark purple scaly bark, and spreading usually horizontal branches. Leaves flat, often falcate, gradually narrowed at the base, dark green, smooth and keeled on the upper surface, paler, papillate, and stomatiferous on the lower surface, their margins slightly thickened and revolute. Flowers diœcious or monœcious: the male composed of a slender stipe bearing at the apex a globular head of 4—8 pale yellow stamens consisting of 4—6 conic pendant pollen-sacs peltately connate from the end of a short filament; the female sessile in the axils of the upper scale-like bracts of a short axillary branch, the ovule erect, sessile on a ring-like disk, ripening in the autumn into an ovoid-oblong seed gradually narrowed and short-pointed at apex, marked at base by the much-depressed hilum, about ⅓′ long, entirely or nearly surrounded by but free from the now thickened succulent translucent sweet scarlet aril-like disk of the flower open at apex; seed-coat thick, of two layers, the outer thin and membranaceous or fleshy, the inner much thicker and somewhat woody; albumen uniform.

Taxus with six or seven species, which can be distinguished only by their leaf characters and habit, is widely distributed through the northern hemisphere, and is found in eastern North America where two species occur, in Pacific North America, Mexico, Europe, northern Africa, western and southern Asia, China, and Japan. Of the exotic species the European, African, and Asiatic Taxus baccata L., and its numerous varieties, is often cultivated in the United States, especially in the more temperate parts of the country, and is replaced with advantage by the hardier Taxus cuspidata S. & Z., of eastern Asia in the northern states, where the native shrubby Taxus canadensis Marsh, with monœcious flowers is sometimes cultivated.

Taxus, from τάξος, is the classical name of the Yew-tree.

CONSPECTUS OF THE NORTH AMERICAN ARBORESCENT SPECIES.

Leaves usually short, yellow-green.1. [T. brevifolia] (G). Leaves elongated, usually falcate, dark green.2. [T. floridana] (C).

1. [Taxus brevifolia] Nutt. Yew.

Leaves ½′—1′ long, about ¹/₁₆′ wide, dark yellow-green above, rather paler below, with stout midribs, and slender yellow petioles ¹/₁₂′ long, persistent for 5—12 years. Flowers and fruit as in the genus.

A tree, usually 40°—50° but occasionally 70°—80° high, with a tall straight trunk 1°—2° or rarely 4½° in diameter, frequently unsymmetrical, with one diameter much exceeding the other, and irregularly lobed, with broad rounded lobes, and long slender horizontal or slightly pendulous branches forming a broad open conical head. Bark about ¼′ thick and covered with small thin dark red-purple scales. Wood heavy, hard, strong, bright red, with thin light yellow sapwood; used for fence-posts and by the Indians of the northwest coast for paddles, spear-handles, bows, and other small articles.

Distribution. Banks of mountain streams, deep gorges, and damp ravines, growing usually under large coniferous trees; nowhere abundant, but widely distributed usually in single individuals or in small clumps from the extreme southern part of Alaska, southward along the coast ranges of British Columbia, Washington, and Oregon, where it attains its greatest size; along the coast ranges of California as far south as the Bay of Monterey, and along the western slopes of the Sierra Nevada to Tulare County at altitudes between 5000° and 8000° above the sea-level, ranging eastward in British Columbia to the Selkirk Mountains, and over the mountains of Washington and Oregon to the western slopes of the continental divide in northern Montana; in the interior much smaller than near the coast and often shrubby in habit.

Occasionally cultivated in the gardens of western Europe.

2. [Taxus floridana] Chapm. Yew.

Leaves usually conspicuously falcate, ¾′ to nearly 1′ long, ¹/₁₆′—¹/₁₂′ wide, dark green above, pale below, with obscure midribs and slender petioles about ¹/₁₆′ in length. Flowers appearing in March. Fruit ripening in October.

A bushy tree, rarely 25° high, with a short trunk occasionally 1° in diameter, and numerous stout spreading branches; more often shrubby in habit and 12°—15° tall. Bark ⅛′ thick, dark purple-brown, smooth, compact, occasionally separating into large thin irregular plate-like scales. Wood heavy, hard, very close-grained, dark brown tinged with red, with thin nearly white sapwood.

Distribution. River bluffs and ravines on the eastern bank of the Apalachicola River, in Gadsden County, Florida, from Aspalaga to the neighborhood of Bristol.