ARALIA IN AMERICAN PALEOBOTANY. 
EDWARD W. BERRY. 
In a study of the mid-Cretaceous floras of the Atlantic coastal 
plain, the difficulty of determining by what characters certain 
leaves were allied to Aralia, Sassafras, or Sterculia led to a some- 
what extended review of these genera, more particularly the 
former, which is so abundantly represented throughout the 
American Cretaceous and Tertiary. 
As to the relationship of these leaves with modern species 
of Aralia, we are not here especially concerned. Leaves of this 
type, however, are such a constant feature of these ancient floras, 
both in this country and abroad, that they possess an unusual 
degree of interest, and I have endeavored in the following notes 
to define more precisely the characters which serve to distinguish 
these leaves from leaves of other genera with which they are 
often confused. 
The existing species of Araliaceae number about 450, which 
Harms, in Die natiirlichen Pflanzenfamilien, distributes among 51 
genera. They are widely distributed in the temperate and trop- 
ical regions throughout the world, and include herbs, shrubs, and 
trees with simple, lobed, or compound leaves. The genus Aralia, 
as restricted, includes some 27 species of North America and 
Asia with ternately and pinnately decompound leaves. The only 
fossil form which seems to stand in this ancestral line is Avalia 
triloba Newb. from the Fort Union Tertiary. 
In North America north of Mexico we have six existing 
Species of Aralia, four eastern and two western (besides three 
varieties). Of these Avalia spinosa L. is the only arborescent 
form. Beside Aralia two other genera occur with us: Panax, 
with two eastern North American species and five species of 
central and eastern Asia; and Echinopanax, with one species on 
the Pacific coast of America, which reappears in Japan. Many 
(other genera occur in the West Indies, Mexico, Central and 
South America. 
1903] 421 
