Evergreen, buttressed, monoecious trees up to 50 m tall in the wild, up to 30 m tall in cultivation; bark reddish brown, shredding
Branchlets hairless, deciduous
Leaves up to 20 mm long, spirally arranged in 5 ranks, persisting for 4 or 5 years, awl-shaped, blunt, margins incurved
Male cones ± 7.5 mm long, terminal, in clusters of 20 or more, orange or red when ripe
Female cones on short branchlets, surrounded by small rosettes of leaves; mature cones solitary, spherical, ± 15 mm long; scales 20-30, with 2 or 3 lobes and a recurved, triangular point on back; ovules erect
Seeds triangular, very narrowly winged
x = 11 (aneuploids, polyploidy)
Nomenclature:
*Cryptomeria D.Don
Don: 233 (1838)
Dallimore & Jackson: 183 (1966), good account of numerous cultivars
Lewis: 79 (1986)
Page: 357 (1990)
Distribution & Notes:
Global: Species 2 or more, China and Japan
Southern Africa: Species 1: *Cryptomeria japonica (L.f.) D.Don, is recorded as naturalised in the KwaZulu-Natal midlands
References:
DALLIMORE, W. & JACKSON, A.B. 1966. A handbook of the Coniferae and Ginkgoaceae, edn 4, revised by S.G. Harrison. Arnold, London
DON, D. 1838. Two new genera of the natural family of plants called Coniferae. Annals of Natural History 1
LEWIS, J. 1986. Taxodiaceae. European Garden Flora 1
PAGE, C.N. 1990. Taxodiaceae. In K. Kubitzki, The families and genera of vascular plants 1. Springer-Verlag, Berlin
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Welcome to Biodiversity Advisor 2.0!
Biodiversity Advisor, developed by the South African National Biodiversity Institute (SANBI) and its Data Partners, is a system that will provide integrated biodiversity information to a wide range of users who will have access to geospatial data, plant and animal species distribution data, ecosystem-level data, literature, images and metadata.
The integrated information comes from our much-loved Botanical Database of Southern Africa (BODATSA) also known as Plants of Southern Africa (POSA), Zoological Database of Southern Africa (ZODATSA), Biodiversity Geographic Information System (BGIS), SANBI's institutional repository (Opus) and others.
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