Ripe cones, solitary, erect, on short stout peduncles, dull-brown, resinous, ellipsoid or cylindrical; rounded, flattened or depressed at the apex. Bracts obsolete or minute and ragged. Scales numerous, closely imbricated, woody, fanshaped; upper expanded part thin, transversely oblong, with denticulate rounded or sloping wings, brown-tomentose in greater part beneath, almost glabrous above; claw thickened, obcuneate, with a raised ridge between the depressions for the seeds on the upper surface, the lower surface being slightly hollowed by the pressure of the seeds of the adjoining scale. Seeds, two on each scale, ¼ to ½ inch long, with resinvesicles on both surfaces, brown, irregularly triangular; surmounted by a membranous brownish wing, broadly triangular or hatchet-shaped, about twice as long as the body of the seed. Cotyledons, nine or ten.
The flowers appear in July or August, the pollen being shed profusely in October. During winter the cones remain small, and only begin to grow in the following April, attaining about half or two-thirds their full size in October of the second year. They are fully ripe in October or November of the third year, i.e. about twenty-six months after the first appearance of the flowers. In their native forests the dissemination of the seed is caused by the autumnal rains, the cones not disarticulating in dry weather. After being soaked with rain, the scales and seeds separate from the axis of the cone (which remains persistent on the branch) and fall to the ground, the seeds with their light wings being blown, when there is a breeze, to a little distance from the parent tree. In England, irregularities occur in the period when the cones disarticulate, dependent, probably, on the absence of heavy rains in the autumn in certain seasons.
Seedling.—Plants raised from seed gathered on Mount Lebanon in 1904, and sown at Monreith in April 1905, averaged 9 inches high in the following September,[1] and showed the following characters:—Tap-root, about 9 inches long, slender, with a few lateral fibres. Caulicle, 2 inches long, slightly furrowed, glabrous. Cotyledons, ten, sessile, 1¾ inch long, curved, tapering to a sharp point, triangular in section, the upper two sides stomatiferous, the lower side green and narrow. Young stem glabrous, bearing in a whorl, just above the cotyledons, the first seven leaves, ⅝ inch long, linear, flattened, sharp-pointed, stomatiferous on both surfaces, deeply grooved below, slightly convex above, sharply serrate in margin. Above the whorl, leaves, gradually increasing in size to 1⅛ inch long, arise in spiral order, similarly serrate and stomatiferous, but almost rounded in section; in addition, the stem gives off at irregular intervals five or six small branchlets.
With regard to the different forms of the cedar, which inhabit four distinct and isolated areas, opinions are much at variance as to their rank. They differ more or less in the length of their leaves, and in the size and shape of the cones, cone scales, and seeds, and in the young stage they differ in habit; but in their native forests they all assume, when old, the flattened form which is sometimes erroneously considered to be peculiar to the Lebanon cedar. This is caused by the inflection of the leading shoot, which is followed by a diminution in the rate of vertical growth, the lateral branches at the same time thickening and growing out horizontally. An
- ↑ This growth is quite exceptional in my experience.—(H.J.E.)
