An evergreen tree, attaining in China 150 feet in height and 18 feet in girth of stem, with brownish bark scaling off in irregular longitudinal plates, and exposing a reddish cortex beneath. Branches at first in pseudo-whorls, afterwards given off irregularly, Young branchlets sub-opposite or in pseudo-whorls, covered with green epidermis; older shoots brownish except for the green leaf-bases. Leaves persistent alive five to seven years, afterwards remaining dry and dead for many years on the branches and even upon the stem; densely and spirally arranged on the branchlets, but twisted on their bases so as to be thrown into two lateral spreading ranks; narrowed at the base and decurrent on the shoot to the insertion of the next leaf; rigid, more or less curved, narrowly lanceolate, acuminate, 1 to 2 inches long; upper surface dark green, concave with slightly raised margins; lower surface convex, with a green midrib and two white stomatic bands, the stomata in several regular lines; sharply and finely serrate; with one resin-canal beneath the single unbranched fibrovascular bundle.
Staminate flowers, five to ten in an umbel at the apex of a branchlet; the umbel surrounded at its base by numerous triangular imbricated serrulate bracts; each flower a spike-like cylindrical column of spirally crowded stamens; each stamen consisting of a slender stalk with an ovate serrulate connective, from which hang three longitudinally-dehiscing anther-cells. Female flowers, single or three or four together at the apex of a branchlet; erect ovoid cones, composed of numerous spirally imbricated lanceolate mucronate bracts in a continuous series with the leaves; lower bracts sterile, resembling leaves but with thickened bases; ovular scale on the upper fertile bracts visible only as a slight projection; ovules three on the base of each bract, reversed.
Fruit, an ovoid-globose brownish cone, about 1½ inch long, composed of thin woody scales, which are the bracts of the flowers increased in size and hardened, but otherwise little altered; loosely imbricated, serrate in margin, broadly ovate or reniform, with a cusped apex often reflected outwards. Seed-scale visible only as a transverse narrow membranous fimbriated projection on the inner surface of the woody bract, below its centre and above the seeds. Seeds three on each bract, about ¼ inch long, brown, oblong compressed, surrounded by a membranous narrow wing. Cotyledons two. The cones persist for a year or more on the branchlets after the escape of the seed; and are occasionally proliferous, the elongated shoot above the cone producing leaves and growing to be several inches in length.[1]
Seedling.—Seedlings sown at Colesborne in spring were about 3 inches high in August, and had a short flexuose tap-root, provided with a few lateral fibres. Caulicle brownish, terete, glabrous, 1 inch long. Cotyledons two, about ½ inch long, coriaceous, entire, linear, with a median groove beneath. Young stem glabrous, ridged by the decurrent bases of the leaves. Leaves numerous, spirally arranged on the stem, ½ to 1½ inch long, soft in texture, linear, curved, broad at the base, whence they taper gradually to a fine bristle-pointed apex, serrulate in margin, green above, marked beneath with two narrow white stomatic bands.
In Cunninghamia, as in Araucaria, root-suckers are often produced, which grow
- ↑ Cf. Woods and Forests, 1884, p. 593, and Garden, xxix. 173 (1886).
