﻿PRESERVATION AND EXTERNAL CHARACTERS. 



37 



The trunks of the living Cycas after reaching a certain age usually branch, and 

 Japanese gardeners, taking advantage of the branching habit of the native species 

 Cycas revoluta, dwarf this plant and cause it to branch far more profusely than it 

 ever does in nature. The singularly beautiful plants thus obtained sometimes bear 

 as many as twenty crowns of leaves, and some of them are said to have a recorded 

 age of several hundred years. Some of these interesting results of horticultural art 

 are shown in text-figures 8 to 10, and present curiously exact parallels of size and 



Fig. 9. — Cycas revoluta. — "Shishi" or lion's-head variety. 



A specimen similar to that shown in the preceding figure and recalling the form and habit of Cycadeoidea superba. 

 (Cf. Plate X.) These unique plants serve fairly well as restorations of branching Cycadeoidean trunks. 



form to the branching types of Cycadeoideae. Figures 8 and 9 represent truly mag- 

 nificent ornamental plants about a meter high, which have reached a venerable age 

 of more than five hundred years. This is the so-called "shishi " or "lion's head" 

 variety, with numerous short and thickly-set branches. Regarding this fanciful 

 resemblance, it is a singular coincidence that in his original description of the type 

 of Cycadeoidea Marshiana, Professor Ward spoke of its resemblance in a certain 

 position to " a huge animal ;" and that to the writer, long before he casually 



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