113 



A NEW FOSSIL COEEMA. 



By Clement Keid, F.K.S., & Eleanor M. Reid, B.Sc. 



(Plate 531.) 



The Empetrace(2 form so small an order, with only three 

 genera and about six species, that the discovery of a new species 

 fossil in Britain is worth recording. The fruits in question were 

 found by us in 1904 in the pre-glacial deposits of Pakefield, in 

 Suffolk. Their curious shape and mode of attachment made us 

 then refer them to some unknown species of ViburniLvi, and as 

 such they were described in 1908.''' The great difficulty in cutting 

 sections of these pyritised fruits from the Cromer Forest-bed made 

 us also less careful to examine their internal characters than we 

 should have been. 



A few years after the discovery of the Pakefield specimens two 

 endocarps belonging to the same plant f were found at Tegelen, 

 in Dutch Limburg, in deposits somewhat more ancient than those 

 of Pakefield, and probably of about the age of our Norwich Crag. 

 These also were figured by us as belonging to this unknown 

 species of Viburnum. 



The study of a still older Pliocene flora in Dutch Limburg, 

 with many fruits and seeds belonging to unknown genera, has 

 lately necessitated the systematic examination of the flora of the 

 Pala3arctic Region, as represented by the fruits and seeds in the 

 Kew Herbarium. In the course of this work we came across the 

 small genus Gorema, and were at once struck by the resemblance 

 of its endocarps to our unknown fossils. A close comparison of 

 the recent fruits with our fossils left no doubt whatever that they 

 belong to the same genus, though the fossils represent an extinct 

 species. This Corema happens also to be the first extinct 

 plant that has been recognized in the Cromer Forest-bed, 

 though several other plants found in that deposit no longer 

 live in Britain. 



Of the two living species of the genus, the one nearest our 

 fossil, C. alba, is found on the coast of Portugal and Spain, and in 

 the Azores. The other, C. Conradi, belongs to the coastal region 

 of the New England States in North America. 



Thus not only does our fossil show a former wider distribution 

 of the genus, but it is the first plant now specially belonging to 

 the Atlantic province to be found fossil in the North Sea basin. 



As regards the conditions under which the extinct Corema 

 grew, we can only say that the two deposits in which it has been 

 found were both in all probability laid down as river alluvium 

 within a few miles of salt water. This would agree with the 

 habitat of the two living species, both of which are confined to 

 coastal regions. 



* Litinean Sociehfs Journal, Botany, xxxviii. p. 215, figs, lb-11. 

 t Verslagen Kon. Akad. Wet. Amsterdam, 1910, p. 267, figs. 30, 31. 



Journal op Botany.— Vol. 52. [May, 1914.] k 



