250 



XLVII.-ENCEPHALARTOS WOODII. 



(with tlate.) 



lu tlie Aiiiuiar Report on the Natal Botanic Gardens and 

 Colonial Herbarium for the year 1900-07, p. 8, Mr. (now Dr.) 

 J. Medley Wood, the Director, gave a brief account and a photo- 

 graph of a ^^ rare variety of Encephalartos '^ which had been dis- 

 covered by hizn in Zululand a few years previously. Some living* 

 plants of the same species were collected in 1903 and again in 1907 

 by Mr. Wylie, the Curator of the Gardens* These were then 

 planted in the J^at^d Gardens, and a leaf from one of the plants 

 was forwarded to Kew, and provisionally determined as 

 Encephalartos Altensteinii^ Lehm., var. hispijiosa, and the photo- 

 graph in the report bore this name. 



In an account of the new plants exhibited Ly Messrs. Sander and 

 Sons, of St, Albans and Bruges, at the centenary exhibition of 

 the Ghent Botanical and Horticultural Society, published in the 

 Gardeners' Chronicle for 1908, Ixiii. p. 257, the same species was 

 described as Encephalartos Woodiiy Hort. Sand. It was pointed 

 out that for garden purposes, at any rate, the plant was as distinct 

 iroin the vaiiahle E , Altensteinii as the other recognised species of 

 the genus were from one another. The largest plant shown at the 

 exhibition had a stem 18 ins. high and 8 ins. in diameter, with a 

 handsome head of 25 leaves, which attained 5 ft, in length. The 

 leaves were gracefully curved and furnished with leaflets of 

 variable size, the largest being 8 ins. long and 2 ins. wide, arranged 

 about 4 ins. apart in the low-er portion of the rhaehis, and mora 

 closely towards the apex, where they overlapped. The broadest 

 leaflets were irregularly pinnatifid, the principal divisions and 

 apex being spine-tipped. It was stated that the texture and 

 bi'ight shining green of the large leaves easily distinguished the 

 plants from all other species of Encephalartos. It was said to 



grow well under cultivation, and to be a strikin^lv handsome 

 plant. ^ ^ 



In the same volume of the Gardeners' Chronicle, p. 414, Mr. 

 Medley Wood gave a more detailed account of the discovery of 

 the species, which we take the liberty of reprinting here: 



''In the year 1895 I was on a botanical collecting trip with 

 wagon and oxen in Zululand, and having reached a spot where the 

 country was very rough I stayed for several days botanising in the 

 vicinity, and in so doing found a solitary clump of Encephalartos, 

 consisting of four stems, the tallest of which was about 18 ft. 

 Ingh with proportionate girth of stem, and with a few offsets at 

 the base; the stems were all male, and not another plant of the 

 species could be found in the vicinity, though we f onnd a number 

 of plants of E. hrachyphyllus, oE which we took away a number of 

 specimens. Some years afterwards our Curator, Mr. J. Wylie, 

 visited the locality, and I directed him to the place where these 

 Encephalartos were. He brought back with him several of the 

 smaller plants of the group, three of which were planted here, 

 and m my report for 1906-7 I gave a photograph of one of them, 

 with a very short note as to the habitat of the species. We have 

 m the garden seven species of Encephalartos, and numerous 



flfi 



