Dacrycarpus
Content
Description
Dioecious shrubs or trees, to 41 m tall.
Bark hard, dark brown or blackish but weathering to gray, surface rough with occasional lenticels, inside pink to reddish brown and granular or slightly fibrous, on older trees breaking off in small thick, somewhat vertically elongated plates or sometimes short strips.
Leaves amphistomatic, spirally placed, broadly decurrent, apiculate.
Leaves at the base of the seed-bearing structure sharply elongated to form an involucre which often surrounds the immature seed-bearing structure but which in the shorter examples becomes spreading as the structure grows.
The inverted ovules completely surrounded by the epimatium and fused as a rib along one side with the fertile bract whose short free tip forms a small off-centre crest over the mature structure.
Distribution
Asia-Tropical: New Guinea present, New Zealand present, Pacific: Fiji (Fiji present), northern Burma present, southernmost China present
Ranging from northern Burma and southernmost China to Fiji and New Zealand 9 spp.; in Malesia abundant with 7 spp., reaching their greatest variety in New Guinea with 5 spp. .
Notes
Sterile specimens strongly resemble Dacrydium and hence the generic name. The fusion of the fertile scale with the epimatium is a unique trait of the genus while the seeds of Dacrydium are furthermore naked. In most cases sterile specimens can be readily distinguished from Dacrydium by the distinctly dimorphic foliage.
Citation
Miq. 1859 – In: Fl. Ind. Bat.: 1074
DE KIRWAN 1868 – In: Conif.: 224
PARL. 1868 – In: DC., Prod. 16: 520
DE LAUB. 1972 – In: Fl. Nouv. Caléd. et Dép.: 34
1867: Traité Gen. Conif., ed. 2: 676
WASSCHER 1941 – In: Blumea: 386
1875: Pinetum, ed. 2: 356
EICHLER 1889 – In: E. & P., Nat. Pfl. Fam. II: 105
DE LAUB. 1978 – In: Kalikasan: 125
STILES 1912 – In: Ann. Bot.: 448
HENKEL& HOCHSTETTER 1865: Synop. Nadelhölz.: 403
BUCHHOLZ & GRAY 1948 – In: J. Arn. Arb.: 56
PILGER 1926 – In: E. & P., Nat. Pfl. Fam., ed. 2, 13: 242
FOXW. 1911 – In: Philip J. Sc.: Bot. 156
1908 – In: E. & P., Nat. Pfl. Fam., Nachtr. 3: 3
GORDON 1858: Pinetum, ed. 1: 289
VAN ROYEN 1979 – In: Alpine Fl. New Guinea: 11
GIBBS 1912 – In: Ann. Bot.: 525
PILGER 1903 – In: Pfl. R.: 55
CARRIERE 1855: Traité Gen. Conif., ed. 1: 477
BEISSNER 1891: Nadelholzkunde: 17
DE BOER 1866: Conif. Arch. Ind.: 25
HICKEL 1931 – In: Fl. Gén. I.-C.: 1066
GAUSSEN 1974 – In: Gymn. Act. & Foss.: 133