Epidermal Feature of the Leaves of Taxus in Relation to Taxonomy
红豆杉属叶子的表皮特征与分类的关系

The comparative observations of the leaves of Chinese Taxus have been made with special reference to their under epidermal structure of leaves and the under epidermal feature of leaves in relation to toxonomy of Taxus has been discussed. The epidermal feature of the under surface of the leaves of Chinese Taxus can be classified into three types, namely: (I) the strongly papillate cuticular peges present in median zone of the under surface of the leaves; (II) some files of epidermal cells in median zone have no papillate cuticular peges and (III) in partial region of the median zone less strongly developed papillae peges are covered in patches or scattered. Based upon the fact we may conclude that the under epidermal structure types of leaves of Chinese Taxus are not characteristic to any speeies of Taxus and parti- cularly, the morphological characters of leaves and the geographical distribution of the species are overlapping among different species, thus, the identification of spe- cies based upon under epidermal structure types may result in obscurity. Therefore, the under epidermal feature of leaves of Taxus only can be used as accessory feature for identification of species and it can not be used as an importantcriterion for identification.