I took a sprig of a conifer home to test my ability to differentiate between the different types and then did some searching on the net for conifer anatomy. While I found pics of various conifer leaves I got confused by comments like 'needles are 4 ranked' which left me scratching my head. I kept looking at the piece in my hand and photos in my book but I couldn't get my head round it. What do they mean by 4 ranked or 2 ranked?
Two-ranked means the needles lie flat either side of the shoot (e.g. many Abies) Four-ranked means pairs of needles at right angles to each other (e.g. many cypresses)
