﻿YOUNG FRUCTIFICATIONS. 



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maturation. Whether the flowers required one, two, or three years to mature, 

 after initial growth of a bundle supply leading from the woody cylinder of the 

 trunk or after their first appearance in the axils of the leaves at the base of the 



armor, is not yet possible to decide, 

 though it is most likely that from two 

 to three or in some cases even more 

 years elapsed from the incipiency to 

 the maturity of such a series of fruits. 

 It is to be remembered that the sixty- 

 one axes of fructification enumerated 

 on trunk 214 are adjudged to be all 

 that were ever borne by this plant. Its 

 preservation is so perfect that there can 

 be no serious error on this point. No 

 parts are lost, no old peduncles have 

 been found, and no distinctly younger 

 axes belonging to some other than the 

 main series are present, with the excep- 

 tion, at most, of the young peduncles 

 near the summit, which may just as 

 well be interpreted as showing arrested 

 as uncompleted growth, with maturity 

 during a succeeding year of waning 

 fruit production. In either case it is 

 difficult to believe that trunk 2 14 would 

 ever again have produced fruits in any 

 considerable number. Bearing in mind 

 the large size of this trunk and the 

 alteration of function produced by the 

 immense effort required to put forth its 

 sixty-one fruit-bearing branches, as well 

 as the great tension and disturbance of 

 the armor caused by their emergence, 

 it is plain that the ripening of seeds 

 in most of the cones must have taxed 

 the energies of the plant to the utmost 

 and marked a culminant period that 

 may well have been the closing scene 

 in its life, as in the umbrella palm of 

 Ceylon {Corypha umbraculiferd). 

 That a culminant mode of fructification characterized many of the Cycade- 

 oideae, therefore, seems most probable from the study of the present and the very 

 different species of the C. Wielandi, C. Payne/, and C. turrita group of trunks 

 icf. p. 126); while in C. Stantoni (186 a) occupation of all axils had plainly ended 

 fruiting after one or several very productive seasons. 



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Fig. 100- Continued. 



IV. Section cutting peduncle near the lowermost of the bracts. The 

 complete series of surrounding leaf bases is present and the bundle 

 system of several is preserved as indicated. S. 505. 



V. Section through peduncle cut beneath the insertion of the lowermost 

 bracts and showing the large bundles of the woody cylinder of the 

 peduncle. S. 506. 



VI. Section cutting obliquely through outer cortex, and on right side 

 through two leaf bases near their cortical insertion. The large pedun- 

 cular bundle traces, as well as that of the axillary leaf base and 

 various other leaf bases, in part seen in section V, are all distinct. 

 S. 508. 



