Page:TheTreesOfGreatBritainAndIreland vol01.djvu/225



A tree or dense shrub, with the trunk often branching into several stems from near the base. Bark of trunk thin, reddish brown, and separating in longitudinal papery scales. The bark begins to scale on branches which are about a half inch in thickness. The branches are ascending, becoming tortuose at their extremities, and giving off more or less equal-sided branch-systems, which are disposed in vertical planes, with their inner edge directed towards the stem of the tree. These are finer and more closely ramified than in the preceding species. Their main axes are terete; bearing median leaves, marked by a glandular longitudinal depression, and ending in triangular free points (not appressed to the axis); and lateral leaves, ending in similar but longer free points, which are thickened at the part where they become free and reflected away from the axis. The leaves on the ultimate branchlets are closely imbricated, appressed to the stem, and marked with longitudinal depressions.

The male flowers are globose and composed of 4 decussate pairs of stamens.

The cones are erect and ovoid, fleshy and bluish before ripening, but ultimately becoming dry and woody, the scales gaping widely. Scales, usually 3 pairs (occasionally a fourth pair, sterile and much reduced, appears at the base), the two lowest fertile, the uppermost pair aborted and sterile: ovate, obtuse, thick, and ligneous, bearing externally below the apex a hooked process. The seeds, 2 on each scale, are large, ovoid, without wings, brown in colour, with a white, large, oblong hilum.

The seedling resembles that of the other species of Thuya, except that the cotyledons are much larger, about an inch in length.

A great number of varieties of this species have been obtained. The most remarkable of these are:—

I. Var. pendula, Masters, ''Jour. R. Hort. Soc.'' xiv. 252.