1. TORREYA ARN.
Tumion Raf.
Glabrous fœtid or pungent aromatic trees, with fissured bark and verticillate or opposite spreading or drooping branches. Leaves thin, long-pointed, abruptly contracted at base, dark green, lustrous and slightly rounded above, thickened and revolute on the margins, with pale bands of stomata on each side of the midvein on the lower surface. Flowers diœcious; the male crowded in the axils of adjacent leaves, on shoots of the previous year, oval or oblong, composed of 6 or 8 close whorls each of 4 stamens, subverticillately arranged on a slender axis; filaments stout and expanded above into 4 globose yellow pollen-sacs united into a half ring, their connectives produced above the cells; the female on shoots of the year less numerous and scattered, sessile, the ovule surrounded by and finally inclosed in an ovoid urn-shaped fleshy sac, and becoming at the end of the second season an oblong-ovate yellow-brown seed, rounded and apiculate at apex, acute and marked at base by the large dark hilum; seed-coat thick and woody, its inner layer folded into the thick white albumen, surrounded and finally inclosed in the thick green or purple enlarged disk of the flower composed of thin flat easily separable fibers, splitting longitudinally when ripe into two parts and separating from the basal scales persistent on the short stout stalk of the seed.
Torreya is now confined to Florida and Georgia, western California, Japan, the island of Quelpart, and central and northern China. Four species are recognized. Of the exotic species the Japanese Torreya nucifera S. & Z. is occasionally cultivated in the eastern states.
The genus is named in honor of Dr. John Torrey, the distinguished American botanist.
CONSPECTUS OF THE NORTH AMERICAN SPECIES.
Leaves slightly rounded on the back, pale below; leaves, branches, and wood fœtid; branchlets gray or yellowish green.1. [T. taxifolia] (C). Leaves nearly flat, green below; leaves, branches and wood pungent-aromatic; branchlets reddish brown.2. [T. californica] (G).
1. [Torreya taxifolia] Arn. Stinking Cedar. Torreya.
Tumion taxifolium Greene.
