Greek dacry - tear, karpos - fruit.

Large trees or shrubs. Leaves mostly spirally arranged, scale-like on leading shoots and in more or less two-ranked feathery sprays on other shoots. Plants unisexual. Male cones terminal or axillary. Female cones solitary on a fleshy, warty receptacle of bract bases. Only one seed develops to maturity.

This genus was formerly placed in Podocarpus.

9 species from N Burma & S China to S.Pacific Islands and New Zealand. (Malesia 7 species, New Guinea 5 species).

Dacrycarpus differs from Podocarpus in having flattened two-ranked juvenile branchlets with sickle-shaped leaflets and adult foliage more like that of Dacrydium than Podocarpus. The female cones are borne just below the branchlet tip on a warty, fleshy stalk (receptacle) with the bract scale as long as the terminal seed and united with it on one side. In other genera the bract scale is small and the outer seed covering formed only by the ovuliferous scale.

De Laubenfels (1969).

Source: Spencer, R. (1995). Podocarpaceae. In: Spencer, R.. Horticultural Flora of South-eastern Australia. Volume 1, Ferns, conifers & their allies. The identification of garden and cultivated plants. University of New South Wales Press.