THE WESTERN CYCADS 15 



is almost ideal for a tropical botanical station. It is 

 never much warmer than Chicago; it is never too cold 

 for oranges, coffee, and bananas; and it is only a few 

 miles from Jalapa, the capital of the state of Vera Cruz. 

 The great coffee plantations of the Arbuckles give only a 

 hint of its agricultural possibilities. 



DIOON SPINULOSUM 



Another species is called Dioon spinulosum, because 

 the leaflets are spiny. Seedlings of Dioon edule have 

 spiny leaflets, but this character is not found in plants 

 with stems more than a few inches in height, the margins 

 of all leaflets of older plants being quite smooth. Some 

 would call this an instance of recapitulation — ontogeny 

 recapitulates phylogeny, or the history of the individual 

 is the history of the race — and would claim that Dioon 

 edule is the offspring of Dioon spinulosum, since the 

 older stock is obviously the one which is being recapitu- 

 lated. 



This species was practically unknown when I began 

 my studies. There were two descriptions, both based 

 upon a few small leaves of young plants, and in the only 

 localities given, Progreso in Yucatan and Cordova in 

 the state of Vera Cruz, the plant does not occur at all. 

 Both descriptions were from potted plants, but the 

 gardener at Cordova believed that his specimen came 

 from Tuxtla. 



During my second trip, in 1906, I saw a small potted 

 specimen in the park at Vera Cruz, but I received only 

 the vague information that it grew somewhere farther 

 south. After returning to Chicago I sent Governor 

 Dehesa a photograph of the Vera Cruz specimen and, 



