96 UNITED STATES GEOLOGICAL SURVEY— TEKTIAEY FLOKA. 



MOSACE^. 



MUSOPHYLLUM, Goepp. 



miisopliylluiii complicatum, Lesqz. 



Plate XV, Figs. 1-6. 



ilusopliylhim eompUcatum, Lesqx., Annual Keport, 1873, p. 418. 



Stipe thick, wrinkled-striate in the length ; leaves large, with a thick, irregularly veined midrib; 

 veins distinct, but very thin, simple or dichotomons toward the borders, more or less oblique to the 

 midrib. 



Stipe thick, wrinkled or striate, with parallel lines much larger and more 

 distant and more irregular than the veins of the leaves; leaves very large 

 with undulate entire borders, apparently parallel to the irregularly veined 

 midrib, closely narrowly veined; veins thin, generally simple, scarcely one- 

 third of a millimeter distant, sometimes forking near the borders, joining the 

 midrib in an acute angle of divergence, then open and in right angle to it. 

 The nervation is exposed in its details in fig. 3 a, representing the point of a 

 small leaf, which seems attached by its whole base to the stipe. 



The exact characters of these leaves, especially their form, their size, 

 and their relation to the main stem, or stipe, are very obscure. I have found 

 a bed of shale nearly one foot thick filled entirely with fragments of this 

 species and detached leaves of a Sapindus, and have worked a whole day with 

 a miner, trying, without avail, to get specimens more definite than those 

 which are figured here. Large pieces of shale are covered with fragments 

 of leaves, folded in various ways, where no trace of any middle nerve may 

 be discovered. This proves the large size of these leaves, which, however, 

 may be sometimes narrow and linear, as seen in fig. 1, where the borders are 

 clearly defined on both sides of the large, flat, striate midrib, by a black, 

 slightly inflated, undulate line, like that of the borders of fig. 2. The frag- 

 ment in fig. 3 represents, it seems, a stipe with part of a descending rhizoma, 

 which has the same kind of surface wrinkles, and above it a pedicel obliquely 

 placed upon the stipe, and who.se top is covered and obliterated by folded 

 portions of leaves. The midrib, irregularly striate, is more distinctly seen 

 in fig 1, and less so in fig. 2, where it is covered at the base by fragments, 

 perhaps referable to leaves, but whose nervation is coarser and more distant 

 than in any of the numerous portions of leaves of my specimens; the undu- 

 late entire borders arc not laceration of a broad linear leaf, but true bor- 

 ders. Fig. 4 has the veins very close ; it may represent the top of a young 



