90 UNITED STATES GEOLOGICAL SURVEY— TERTIARY FLORA. 



of specimens with rootlets and their capillary filaments. From Marshall's 

 coal mines, I obtained a number of fragments, especially of deeply striate 

 stems without articulations, and of leaves with a less distinct nervation. 

 From Black Butte, we have also roots and rootlets like those represented by 

 Heer (Fl. Tert. Helv., pi. xxii, tigs. 5 c, 5e), and in the red baked shale 

 of the same locality, specimens of the same kind. The species is especially 

 abundant at the Canon City coal beds, where a hard sandstone, at the base of 

 the highest bluff, and already at a distance above the main coal bed, is filled 

 by fragments of this species, and also in the hard white sandstone of Golden. 

 The specimen represented by fig. 2 of pi. vii is from that locality, found by 

 Mr. Wm. Cleburn. It is remarkably similar to the rootlets described by 

 Ludwig, in Palseont., vol. viii, p. 80, pi. xviil, fig. 2c, as those of Phragmites 

 CEningensis. In this sandstone, also, Mr. Cleburn found a cylindrical, some- 

 what conical, specimen, with articulations close to each other, the size of 

 the stem or rhizoma diminishing with each articulation, and nerved like stems 

 of this species 



As remarked by Heer, this Phragmites is closely allied to P. communis, 

 which is very common through Europe and North Asia. The fossil species 

 appears to have been larger, with broader leaves, without middle nerve. It 

 is remarkable that, though recorded by most of the paleontologists who have 

 had opportunity of studying vegetable remains of the Tertiary, its racemes 

 and fructifications have never been seen, a single pallet only being described 

 by Heer from the Miocene flora of Spitzbergen as referable to it. This 

 celebrated author has described the species from a profusion of fragments of 

 stems and leaves, in the clay shale of La Rochette, near Lausanne, some of 

 them beautifully represented in pi. xxiv of his Fl. Tert. Helv. 



Habitat. — As remarked above, in most of the localities where Tertiary 

 fossil plants have been found, except in the upper group 4 in Wyoming and 

 Colorado Territories. It is especially abundant at Golden and Canon City 

 {Dr. F. V. Hayden, Prof. B. F. Meek, Wm. Cleburn, etc.). 



Phragmites Alaskana, Heer. 



Plate VIII, Figs. 10-12. 

 Phragmites Alaskana, Heer, Fl. Alask., p. 24, pi. 1, fig. 12. — Lesqx., Aunual Report, 1871, p. 296. 



Leaves narrow, nerved iu the length ; primary nerves distinct, lets distant than in the former spe- 

 cies; veinlets obsolete, discernible only under the epidermis, three in each interspace. 



The fragments representing this species indicate leaves much narrower 



