232 BERRY— LOWER EOCENE FLORA OF [April ^s, 



Cretaceous beds of that country. In addition to the foregoing dis- 

 play, the allied genus Araliopsis (Berry 1911) has a number of well- 

 marked species in the Raritan, Magothy and Dakota formations, so 

 that it must be conceded that the araliaceous stock was well differ- 

 entiated and cosmopolitan before the close of the Cretaceous.**' 



There are over a score of Eocene species of Aralia, they being 

 especially common in the Fort Union of the western United States, 

 the Paleocene of Belgium, and the Eocene of Australia. The three 

 Wilcox species are not common — two of them are common Fort 

 Union species and the third was described originally from western 

 Greenland. In addition there are species in the Denver formation, 

 the Green River formation, in Oregon, New Zealand, Italy, and the 

 south of England. 



There are upwards of twenty Oligocene species, especially in the 

 Sannoisian of southeastern France from which 14 species have been 

 described. All of the other Oligocene records are also European. 



There are also about twenty Miocene species distributed over 

 North America, Europe and Asia. Some of the California species, 

 e. g., Aralia Whitneyi, are clearly ancestral to existing Asiatic east- 

 coast forms. A fruit {Aralicccarpum) is described from the ^Miocene 

 of Prussia. There are in addition between 15 and 20 fossil species 

 of Aralia more or less doubtfully connected with other genera of the 

 family, e. g., there is a species of Arthrophylliim doubtfully identified 

 from the upper Oligocene of France; a species of CepJialopanax ( ?) 

 is recorded from the lower Miocene of France ; several forms of 

 Sciadophyllum (?) occur in Greenland, Bohemia and France; and 

 Paratropia ( ?) is recorded from the Paleocene, Oligocene and Mio- 

 cene of France and the Miocene of Bohemia. 



There are two species of Oreopanax in the Wilcox flora, one of 

 them exceedingly well marked and clearly referable to the section 

 Digitatse of Oreopanax. The latter genus has about eighty existing 

 species with simple, lobate and digitate leafed sections confined to 

 tropical America but present in the Paleocene, Tongrian and Aqui- 

 tanian of France. The modern Asiatic genus Acanthopanax De- 

 caisne and Planchon has Oligocene species in France and Germany, 

 and a Miocene species in Japan. 



^^ See Berry, " Aralia in American Paleobotany," Bot. Ga::., Vol. 36, 1903, 

 pp. 421-428. 



