Fossil Floras of Cape Colony. 



31 



I regarded the English Wealden specimens as stout and leathery 

 scales which were originally attached to a cycadean stem, com- 

 paring them with the large persistent petiole bases of the recent 

 Macrozamia douglasi and other cycads. This comparison still 

 seems to me justified by the close resemblance between the 

 fossils and the scales of recent cycadean stems as well as with 

 such fossil scale-leaves or leaf-bases as those in Carruthers' genus 

 Fittonia.-' The English specimens usually show no trace of vena- 

 tion, but in the small example shown in fig. 3 there are several 

 clearly marked veins springing from the basal end. In the larger 

 specimen (fig. 4) the surface shows in places numerous irregular 

 wrinklings similar to those in Cycadoleins jenkinsiana. The curved 

 ridge stretching across the scale close to the base of the specimen 



Text-figure 3. (Xat. size.) (British Museum Collection, Xo. V. 2131a.) 

 Cycadolepis from the Wealden of England. 



drawn in fig. 4 shows the area of attachment and agrees closely 

 with a similar feature in the Uitenhage examples. In the African 

 specimens the lamina is often folded along the median line, a 

 character not noticed in the English forms, and the latter differ 

 in the apparently greater robustness and less leaf-like nature. On 

 the whole I am disposed to consider the Uitenhage fossils as 

 detached leaf-like bodies borne, possibly, on a cycadean stem 

 and serving as protective structures to leaves during the earlier 

 stages of growth. They may be compared with the stipules of 

 the Marattiacea^ among ferns, and with the much smaller scale- 

 leaves of modern cycads. It is true that existing cycadean plants 

 do not possess structui'es that function as sheathing bracts and bear 

 a close resemblance to Ci/cadolejns jenkinsiana ; a nearer analogy 



* Carruthers (70), p. G90. 



