﻿170 



REPRODUCTIVE STRUCTURES. 



CYCADEOIDEA SP. (SECTION 389.) 

 (Figure go, 1.) 



A very fine ovulate cone of much larger size than the preceding, and of a 

 different species, but quite as young and deeply embedded in bracts, is borne by 

 the fragment of a trunk numbered 764. From this were made the longitudinal 

 sections 388 and 389, cutting through the entire fruit and also the peduncle for a 

 length of 4.5 cm. This ovulate cone is distinctly conical in form, 3 cm. long and 

 1.2 cm. in diameter. The rather large enveloping bracts rise a centimeter above 



>«d 



S.y/d 



Fig. 90.— Young fructifications of Cycadeoidea sp. X l£. 



I. Longitudinal section through bract- inclosed ovulate strobilus. Bracts in solid black, leaf bases in heavy and 



peduncles in light stippled surface. 



1, Leaf bases ; o, palisaded zone of seed stems and interseminal scales ; d, the remnants of an hypogynously inserted disk, (This 

 disk may have been abortive, although the form of the ovulate cone and rather wide space between it and the surrounding 

 leaf bases also suggest the possibility of an earlier dehiscence of a matured functional staminate disk.) S. 389. T. 764. 



II. A longitudinal section of a bisporangiate strobilus, together with a transverse section (/), cut on the line / / . 



The space occupied by the broken down tissue of the young staminate disk is shown in solid black, the bracts in very dark stip- 

 pled surface. A single leaf base is seen to lie on both sides of the bract-inclosed fruit (the axilar and supra-axilar bases), 

 sd. the staminate disk in both longitudinal and transverse sections. S. 410- Cut from an isolated trunk fragment. 



the acuminate summit. The seed zone covers all of the lateral area of the conical 

 receptacle very evenly to a depth of scarcely more than a millimeter, the seed pedi- 

 cels being very short and the ovules minute. Beneath the seed zone the position 

 of the annular shoulder, common to all cycadeoidean ovulate cones, may be made 



