510 BERRY: MESOZOIC FLORA OF THE COASTAL PLAIN 
Even though no close comparisons with modern ecological 
groups are possible it would seem that if the Upper Cretaceous 
flora were existing at the present time it would be included by 
ecological botanists under that somewhat elastic head which Schim- 
per calls ‘‘temperate rain-forests.’’ In no other modern plant 
associations do we find that commingling of temperate and tropical 
types that we find in certain present-day temperate rain-forests, 
as for example those of southern Chile, southern Japan, northern 
Australia, and New Zealand. In the last mentioned we find 
aralias, laurels, Cinnamomum, Magnolia, and Sterculia associated 
with Quercus, Fagus, Gleichenia, Dryopteris, Dicksonia, etc. In 
some respects this type in New Zealand is the most tropical in 
its facies and more like our eastern American Upper Cretaceous 
floras than any other existing flora. In New Zealand conifers 
are abundant and include forms with reduced leaves like Lzbo- 
cedrus and Dacrydium, as well as forms with broad leaves like 
Dammara, Podocarpus, and Phyllocladus. Dicotyledonae are 
numerous and varied, including between 100 and 150 species, 
among which forms of Myrtaceae, Lauraceae, Proteaceae, etc., with 
coriaceous leaves are prominent. The undergrowth is rich in 
tree-ferns and various genera of Araliaceae. 
When this modern flora is compared element for element with 
the coastal plain Cretaceous flora many differences naturally 
become apparent, nevertheless the resemblance between the two 
is remarkable. In the coastal plain Cretaceous floras the narrow 
or scale-leaved conifers are represented by Sequoia, Moriconia, 
Brachyphyllum, and Widdringtonites. Dammara represents the 
broad-leaved araucarias, while Androvettia and Protophyllocladus 
represent the modern Phyllocladus. The dicotyledons are nu- 
merous and varied with a mixing of temperate and tropical types 
and with numerous coriaceous forms belonging to a number of 
the same families as do the New Zealand plants. Aralias are 
common in the former as in the latter. That the Cretaceous 
rainfall was plentiful may be inferred, not only from the species 
of plants preserved, but also from the formation of dripping 
points on various leaves, this feature being especially emphasized 
in the Tuscaloosa flora of Alabama, although it is often obscured 
by the facility with which these long slender tips are broken off by 
current action before entombment. 
