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belonging to the tribe Abietineæ of the order Coniferæ, with evergreen foliage, borne, for the most part, in tufted flat masses on the ramifications of the branches, which arise irregularly and not in whorls from the stem. Bark dark grey and smooth on young stems and branches; ultimately on old trunks thick and fissuring into irregular longitudinal plates, roughened externally by small scales.

Branchlets of two kinds: long shoots bearing in spiral order solitary leaves, and short shoots or spurs with leaves in pseudo-verticels. Buds minute ovoid, with a few brown scales, which persist after the opening of the bud, either sheathing the base of the long shoots or surrounding the annual rings of the short shoots. Long shoot with a solitary terminal bud, prolonging the growth of the branchlet in the following year; and with a few lateral buds solitary in the axils of some of the leaves and usually developing into short shoots. Short shoot with a terminal bud only, which, in the following year, either lengthens slightly the spur and adds to it a whorl of leaves with or without flowers, or occasionally develops into a long shoot. Long shoots, slightly furrowed, between the slightly raised decurrent bases of the pulvini, the free ends of which project and bear leaves, and on older branchlets, from which the leaves have fallen, remain persistent as slight prominences.

Leaves, deciduous in the third to the sixth year, variable in length, the shortest on the spurs, articulated at the base, acicular, rigid, sharply pointed, more or less triangular in section, stomatic on all sides; fibro-vascular bundle undivided, hypo- derm thick, with two resin canals close to the epidermis on the lower surface.

Flowers, monœcious, terminal, solitary on the older leaf-bearing short shoots. Male flowers, erect, catkin-like, cylindrical, about 2 inches long; anthers numerous, spirally crowded, bi-locular, dehiscing longitudinally ; connective prolonged into an ovate denticulate crest; pollen grains globose, without wings, borne to the female flowers by the wind. Female flowers appearing as small purplish cones, about ½ inch in length; composed of numerous spirally arranged, closely appressed, irregularly dentate, sub-orbicular scales, each subtended by a short, included, obovate, denticulate bract; ovules, two on each scale, inverted. Rh