I9I4-] SOUTHEASTERN NORTH AMERICA. 231 



The family Araliaceas contains about 52 genera and 500 existing 

 species, chiefly inhabitants of the tropics, the notable exceptions to 

 this statement being in North America and eastern Asia. The 

 modern center of development is in the Asia-Australia region, no 

 less than S3 genera being confined to Asia, Malaysia, Australia or 

 Polynesia. Africa has three peculiar genera with about 30 species ; 

 America has five peculiar genera with about 100 species. The genus 

 Schefflcra is cosmopolitan. Hedera and Polycias occur in Eurasia 

 and Africa. Two genera are common to Asia and America and 

 Aralia adds Australia to a similar distribution. Pseudotenax with 

 about six species is peculiar to western South America and New 

 Zealand. 



The fossil record is not nearly as complete as it should be to 

 afford a secure basis for generalizations. A number of genera are 

 found, however, in the oldest deposits in which undoubted dicoty- 

 ledons are known. The largest genus is Aralia, commonly used by 

 paleobotanists as a form-genus for generically unidentified species 

 of Araliaceae, rather than for forms falling within a strict modern 

 definition of Aralia. No less than fifty species of Aralia have been 

 described from the Cretaceous. Two of these come from horizons 

 as old as the Albian of Portugal. In beds of similar age in eastern 

 America (Maryland and Virginia) there are two well-marked species 

 referred to Aralicephyllum and clearly ancestral to the numerous 

 species of Aralia so common in the Upper Cretaceous of the latter 

 region. Very similar, in some cases identical, forms are found in the 

 Cretaceous on both sides of the Atlantic. There are fifteen species 

 in the Perucer beds (Cenomanian) of Bohemia and Moravia and a 

 like number in the Dakota sandstone of the western United States, 

 while along the east coast there are nine species in the Raritan forma- 

 tion, eight in the Magothy formation, and one each in the Black 

 Creek formation of North Carolina, the Eutaw formation of Georgia, 

 the Tuscaloosa formation of Alabama and the Woodbine sand of 

 Texas. In Greenland there are two species in the Atane beds and a 

 third in those of Patoot. In the younger Cretaceous there are two 

 species in Bohemia, two in Westphalia and one in Colorado. Aus- 

 tralia has a species and ten supposed varieties of Aralia in the Upper 



