Phyllocladus Rich. ex Mirb.

Small to large trees up to 30 m tall, with smooth, dark, platy bark which is reddish or yellowish and fibrous within. Primary branches tend strongly to be in false whorls and secondary branching is abundant. The ultimate foliar shoots are flattened into cladodes or 'phylloclades' which involve a central axis and several alternate side 'shoots'. In outline these cladodes can be oval, triangular, deeply lobed, or compound and small marginal hooks representing reduced leaves can sometimes be seen. Shoots which are to continue growth, whether a secondary axis or a lobed cladode, terminate in a globular bud formed of overlapping triangular scales. These in turn develop into short shoots covered with linear lanceolate caducous scale-leaves in the axils of which new cladodes or fertile structures may be produced. Seedlings bear spirally arranged, single-veined, linear, acute bifacially flattened leaves up to 1 cm long followed gradually by smaller, more lanceolate forms until the adult scales are produced. Specimens are variously found to be dioecious or predominantly of one sex or fully monoecious. The cylindrical pollen cones are clustered each in the axil of a scale of a secondary shoot and are each subtended by a short to long, mostly naked stalk and by a few sterile scales. Seed cones appear singly or grouped either terminally or laterally in the axil of a scale on a naked stalk, at the base of a cladode, or terminally or laterally on a reduced or unreduced cladode. The cone consists of a few to many thickened spirally arranged scales, some of which bear a single erect ovule on the upper surface. The developing seed is surrounded to at least half its length by a symmetrical or nearly symmetrical filmy white aril or rough-edged epimatium. Seeds are oval and wider than thick, protrude from the bright red ripe cone, have a crooked micropyle at the tip, and are dark brown to black.

Upland tropical and temperate rain-forest, often mossy forest, as a large canopy tree to stunted forms near the tree line.