﻿3§ INTRODUCTORY. 



learned of the aged "shishi" of the Japanese gardeners, this fossil cycad trunk 

 always recalled to memory the famous "lion of Lucerne" statue to the Swiss 

 guards! The " hoso," or " tree-formed palm," with much more diffuse branches, 

 shown in figure 10, is even more extraordinary. Planted in a Ruri pot of the 

 eighteenth century, it is seventy-five years old and has a height of 75 cm. The 

 general appearance is in this case more that of a branching tree. Some of the 

 branches are secondary, and there are in all fifteen distinct crowns of leaves. This 

 trunk recalls quite vividly the still more distinctly branched Cycadeoidean plant 

 Anomozamiles minor from the Trias of southern Sweden, as restored bv Nathorst. 



The branches of Cycas grow out from both above and below the surface 

 of the ground, in the latter case affording a parallel to our Florida Zamia, with 

 a tuberous underground trunk, which branches with the greatest freedom, often 

 forming considerable clumps of male or female trunks. Encephcdartos Altensteinii, 

 a species with a distinctly columnar trunk much like but not nearly so tall as Cycas, 

 also branches. An example in the palm house at Kew is mentioned by Seward as 

 bearing a large lateral branch with a well-developed crown of leaves (144). Few 

 handsomer examples of branching cycads have come to the writer's notice than the 

 little-known green-house species shown in figure n. 



From the facts just cited, free branching among some of the fossil forms might, 

 in the absence of any other evidence, be considered well-nigh an implied certainty. 

 Yet we have not hitherto learned of such a profusion of characteristic branching 

 cycad trunks as that now to be described. The only fossil cycadaceous plants 

 exhibiting other than simple columnar outlines mentioned previous to the discovery 

 of the Black Hills cycads are the wonderful Anomozamites minor, with William- 

 sonia fruits, as described by Nathorst (104), and the forked fruiting branch shown 

 by Williamson in his restoration of Wttliamsonia gigas, but mentioned by him as 

 only once observed and possibly anomalous. Albeit Anomozamites [cf. figure 12) 

 is rather more suggestive than any other type of the varied trunk habit, we may 

 expect to meet in the ancient members of the Cycado-Cordaito-Ginkgoalean alliance, 

 which perchance, as will be again mentioned, may well have included the ancestors 

 of the Augiosperms within its widely set limits. 



The great branching trunks from Minnekahta constituting the type specimens of 

 Professor Ward's Cycadeoidea Marshiana and C. minnekahtensis were the first of the 

 larger and more typical cycadeoidean forms brought to light which fully paralleled 

 the branching habit as seen in the living cycads. But owing to the fact that the 

 early collectors in the Black Hills realized neither the extent to which branching 

 trunks are represented in the Minnekahta series nor the importance of securing com- 

 plete specimens, it was several years before the wealth of branching trunks included 

 in it was more fully understood. Instead of isolated examples, we now see that in 

 the case of the Minnekahta cycads those which did not branch were rather the excep- 

 tion, and that many of the groups reached a size and beauty that were at first 

 scarcely suspected. The writer may here state that when he began this investiga- 

 tion there were in the Yale collection 133 specimens, while at the present time there 

 are nearly 800, many of which were collected by him personally. Early in the course 



