A FOSSIL FLOWER FROM THE EOCENE. 



By Edward W. Berry, 



Of the Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland. 



Flowers are by no means so common in the fossil state that new 

 occurrences are without exceptional interest. If the flowers preserved 

 in the Baltic and other amber deposits are omitted from the enumera- 

 tion of this class of remains their number is very limited and their 

 preservation is often not all that could be desired. For these reasons 

 I am prompted to publish a preliminary description of a weU-preserved 

 flower from the Eocene of southern Tennessee collected some years 

 ago by Prof. L. C. Glenn, of Vanderbilt University, and preserved in 

 the collections of the United States National Museum. 



I have been engaged for some years past under the auspices of the 

 United States Geological Survey in a study of the wonderfully rich 

 fossil floras of the Southern States, particularly that of the Lower 

 Eocene, or Wilcox group of formations. The latter flora as known 

 at the present time includes upwards of 250 species of subtropical, 

 largely strand, types. Most of the species are new and the flora as a 

 whole is unlike described American Eocene floras which come largely 

 from the Rocky Mountain province. It is comparable with those of 

 the European Eocene and with the existing flora of the West Indies, 

 Central and northern South America. The specimen described in the 

 following note is made the type of a new genus, since it is not referable 

 with certainty to any of the existing genera of the family with which 

 it shows the most affinity. 



COMBRETANTHITES, new genus. 



This genus is proposed for the following species which is based on 

 a fossil flower referable to the Combretacese and very similar to the 

 flowers of some of the species of the genus Corribretum. To avoid any 

 seeming inaccuracies the species is described in detail from the speci- 

 men even though this repeats some of the floral characters that run 

 through the family. 



Proceedings U. S. National Museum, Vol. 45— No. 1980. 



261 



