Cephalotaxus Sieb. & Zucc. ex Endlicher (1842: 27)

Lang, Xue-Dong, Su, Jian-Rong, Lu, Shu-Gang & Zhang, Zhi-Jun, 2013, A taxonomic revision of the genus Cephalotaxus Taxaceae, Phytotaxa 84 (1), pp. 1-24 : 3

Cephalotaxus Sieb. & Zucc. ex Endlicher (1842: 27) .

Lectotype (designated by Rehder 1949): Cephalotaxus pedunculata Sieb. & Zucc. ex Endlicher (1847: 238) . nom. illeg. . [= C. harringtonii (Knight ex Forbes 1839: 217) Koch (1873: 102) ]

Evergreen trees or shrubs; dioecious or monoecious; bud scales persistent. Leaves 2-ranked, pectinately arranged; blade linear, linear-lanceolate, or occasionally lanceolate, midvein green abaxially, elevated on both surfaces; stomatal bands 2, abaxial, each comprising 11–24 rows of stomata, usually appearing white, as wide as or usually wider than midvein; marginal bands green, as wide as or narrower than midvein; resin canal abaxial. Pollen cones borne on branches of preceding year, aggregated into capitula of 6–8; capitula axillary, solitary, pedunculate or subsessile, peduncle usually with several spirally arranged scales, rarely naked; cones subtended by 1 ovate or triangular-ovate bract; microsporophylls 4–16, each with 2–4 pollen sacs, pollen nonsaccate. Seed cones borne in axils of terminal bud scales, long pedunculate, floral axis with several pairs of decussate bracts each bearing 2 erect, axillary ovules. Seeds ripening in second year, drupe-like, completely enclosed by succulent aril, ovoid, ellipsoid, or globose, apex mucronate. Cotyledons 2; germination epigeal or hypogeal.

Taxonomic notes:— Lang et al. (2011a, b) ascripted Cephalotaxus to Siebold & Zuccarini’ s 1870 work, thinking that the name of Cephalotaxus should be cited as “ Cephalotaxus Siebold & Zucc. — Fl. Jap. II. 66. 1870” rather than “ Cephalotaxus Siebold & Zucc. ex Endl. — Gen. Pl. Suppl. 2: 27. 1842 ”. However, this is an erroneous conclusion, because Recommendation 34A.1 of the Vienna Code (2006) is not mandatory unlike Articles. Moreover, there was no Code in force in 1842 so Endlicher could not have followed this Recommendation. At the time, it was common practice for authors to take up unpublished names from other works. So, in this paper, this wrong conclusion reached in Lang et al. (2011a, b) is fully retracted and revert to using the 1842 publication as being the first effective and valid publication of the name Cephalotaxus . Further more, the taxonomic treatment in Lang et al. is markedly different to the most recent treatment of the genus by Farjon (2010), these differences are tabulated in the following Table 2.