THE AFRICAN CYCADS 47 



enough of the Indian Ocean and did not want to miss 

 the remarkable anc;! varied flora of Cape Colony. So I 

 took the train by way of Ladysmith, Bloemfontein, and 

 Springfontein, a country dotted with cemeteries and 

 monuments reminding us of the Boer War. 



At Queenstown I met Mr. E. E. Galpin, F.L.S., a 

 banker, whose knowledge of South African plants and 

 whose extensive collections had made him a Fellow of 

 the Linnean Society. He went with me to the rugged 

 dolerite ridges near the town and not only showed me 

 scores of large plants of Encephalartos Friderici Guilielmi 

 {venia sit nomini), a species little known to botanists, 

 but gave me such information with regard to its behavior 

 as only a botanist could give after years of observation 

 (Fig. 18). His warning prepared me for the striking 

 variation which this species displays in different local- 

 ities, and guarded me against confusing it with a nearly 

 related species which closely resembles it and is asso- 

 ciated with it in some places. 



This species has a massive trunk surmounted by a 

 crown of forty or fifty leaves which have a pale-green, 

 almost gray, color. The trunk is seldom more than five 

 or six feet in height, and the taller specimens are likely 

 to have the leaning position shown in Fig. 18. The 

 tallest specimens measured less than ten feet and were 

 prostrate; but new crowns continue to appear, and the 

 tip of the stem turns up, while new plants develop at 

 the base from buds which are likely to form on any 

 wounded portion of a cycad stem. When two or three 

 plants are found with their bases united, they are almost 

 sure to mark the site of an old trunk which had fallen 

 and decayed, perhaps hundreds of years before. 



