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According to Newberry, it was abundantly represented in the miocene flora of the temperate zone of our own continent, from Nebraska to the Pacific. Very similar would seem to have been the fate of a more familiar gymnospermous tree, the Gingko or Salisburia. It is now indigenous to Japan only.
It resembled very closely the fruit of the Chinese genus Salisburia, one of the Yew tribe, or Taxoid conifers. Antholithes. Dr. Hooker, after seeing very perfect specimens, also thought that they resembled the spike of a highly-organised plant in full flower, such as one of the Bromeliaceae, to which Professor Lindley had at first compared them. Mr. Pothocites Grantonii, Pat.
Dawson states that they are very similar to both taxus and salisburia.. They are abundant in some coal-measures, and are contained, not only in the coal itself, but also in the sandstones and shales.
In some coal-districts fossil fruits, named cardiocarpum and trigonocarpum, have been found in great quantities, and these have now been decided by botanists to be the fruits of certain conifers, allied, not to those which bear hard cones, but to those which bear solitary fleshy fruits. Sir Charles Lyell referred them to a Chinese genus of the yew tribe called salisburia.
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