The common Liquidambar (_L. styraciflua_) is remarkable for the beautiful crimson which its maple-like leaves take in autumn. The male flowers are on an upright catkin, and the female ones in a globular one, like the Planes. When the fruit is ripe, the numerous capsules that surround the globular catkin burst, and the seeds, which are winged, are scattered by the wind.
The principal genera are Myrica, the Sweet Gale; Comptonia, a curious shrub with fernlike leaves; and Casuarineæ, a New Holland tree without leaves, but with jointed leaf-like stems.
The male flowers are produced in rather long erect catkins, each having only one scale, and four stamens. The female catkins are short, and each flower has three scales or bracts; the ovary has two long stigmas, and the fruit is a drupe, the scales becoming fleshy when ripe. The bracts and leaves are covered with glands filled with aromatic oil; and in _M. cerifera_, the fruit is covered with a waxy secretion, which is used as wax.
This order consists of only one genus, Garrya.
_Garrya elliptica_ is an evergreen shrub remarkable for its long and graceful male catkins, the flowers of which consist of four stamens within a four-cleft calyx, enclosed within bracts united at the base. The female flowers are on a different plant, and the fruit is a berry not opening naturally.
THE CONE-BEARING TREES: ILLUSTRATED BY THE SCOTCH PINE; THE SPRUCE FIR; THE SILVER FIR; THE LARCH; THE CEDAR; THE ARAUCARIA; THE ARBOR VITÆ; THE CYPRESS; THE DECIDUOUS CYPRESS; THE JUNIPER; THE YEW; AND THE CYCADEÆ.
The greater part of the trees included in this chapter are comprised by Richard, De Candolle, and other foreign botanists, in the order Coniferæ; which they have divided into three sections: viz., the Abietineæ, or Pine and Fir tribe; the Cupressineæ, or Cypress tribe; and the Taxineæ, or Yew tribe. The last tribe, however, Dr. Lindley has formed into a separate order, which will probably be adopted. Most of the genera have, what the Germans so graphically call needle leaves; that is, their leaves are long and narrow, and terminate in a sharp point. The flowers also are quite different from what is generally understood by that name; being in fact nothing but scales: those of the male flowers containing the pollen in the body of the scale, and those of the female producing the ovules, or incipient seeds at the base. The fruit of the Abietineæ is a cone, the scales of which open when the seeds are ripe. That of the Cupressineæ is also called a cone by botanists, but it is rounder, and has not so many scales. The fruit of the Taxineæ is an open succulent cup, bearing the seed or nut in its centre.