Saxegothaea

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Credits

Article from Bean's Trees and Shrubs Hardy in the British Isles

Recommended citation
'Saxegothaea' from the website Trees and Shrubs Online (treesandshrubsonline.org/articles/saxegothaea/). Accessed 2024-04-19.

Family

Podocarpaceae

Species in genus

Saxegothaea conspicua

Glossary

pollen: Small grains that contain the male reproductive cells. Produced in the anther.
axillary: Situated in an axil.
cone: Term used here primarily to indicate the seed-bearing (female) structure of a conifer (‘conifer’ = ‘cone-producer’); otherwise known as a strobilus. A number of flowering plants produce cone-like seed-bearing structures including Betulaceae and Casuarinaceae.
epimatium: Expanded fleshy seed-bearing bract scale enclosing the seed in Podocarpaceae.
monoecious: With male and female flowers on the same plant.

References

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Credits

Article from Bean's Trees and Shrubs Hardy in the British Isles

Recommended citation
'Saxegothaea' from the website Trees and Shrubs Online (treesandshrubsonline.org/articles/saxegothaea/). Accessed 2024-04-19.

Foliage of Saxegothaea conspicua, with old rust-coloured male strobili visible, and pale blue female cones developing. (Bicton Park Botanical Gardens, Devon, July 2012). Image John Grimshaw.

A genus of a single monoecious species of conifer in temperate South America, belonging to the same subfamily of Podocarpaceae as Podocarpus itself and Microcachrys. Male inflorescences axillary, cylindric, borne near the tips of the branchlets. Pollen grains unwinged (winged in all other podocarps). Numerous fertile, pointed scales are borne at the end of short twigs, forming when ripe a small, roundish fleshy ‘cone’ containing up to about six seeds, each inserted in a groove at the base of the scale and surrounded by, but not united to, an epimatium (an excrescence from the subtending scale). The small shrub Microcachrys tetragona (q.v.) also has a cone-like fruit, but in most other podocarps only one or a few of the scales of the ‘female’ twigs are fertile.

The genus was named by Lindley in honour of Prince Albert, consort of Queen Victoria.