44 THE OLDER MESOZOIC FLORA OF VIRGINIA. 



This plant must have had magnificent proportions. Portions of pinnae 

 seen indicate that those parts of the plant containing them were over half 

 a meter wide and more than a meter in length. This fern shows affinities 

 with several previously described plants. Professor Newberry's Aletlwpteris 

 JVJdtneyi, obtained from Los Bronces, Sonora, figures of which are given in 

 plate vii of Captain Macomb's report of his "Expedition in New Mexico 

 and Utah," closely resembles our plant. His Pecopteris falcatus, obtained 

 from the same locality, and figured in plate vi, fig. 3, is much like some of 

 the fructified forms of Asterocarpus Virginiensis. Emmons's Pecopteris fal- 

 catus, obtained from the Mesozoic of North Carolina, has a certain resem- 

 blance to it. Aletlwpteris IncUca, from the Rajinahal Hills of India, as de- 

 scribed and figured by Oldham and Morris, and also by Feistmantel, is 

 much like our plant. It does not seem to be identical with any of these 

 plants, but is nearest to Newberry's plant and to the Indian plant of those 

 mentioned above. Our plant is probably the one that Professor Rogers, in 

 his paper on the "Age of the Coal Rocks of Eastern Virginia," compares 

 with Pecopteris Miinsterianus of Sternberg, from Bullenreuth, which is, how- 

 ever, a Woodwardites, according to Schimper. Heer's plant Merianopteris 

 augusta, obtained from the Lettenkohle of Neue Welt, is much like Astero- 

 carpus Virginiensis in most points, except the fructification. The^ figure 

 given by Heer, in his "Pflanzen der Trias," plate xxxvii, fig. 1, of a large 

 specimen of Merianopteris augusta, is almost a fac-simile of the pinnatifid 

 pinnae of the lower part of Asterocarpus Virginiensis. Heer's plant, how- 

 ever, lacks the large simple pinnules found in the Virginia fossil, and the 

 fructification is quite different. In the fossil from Neue Welt the sori are 

 rounded, simple, and placed between the strong, simple lateral nerves. 



Bunbury gives in the Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society, 

 vol. iii, pi. ii, fig. 2, a representation of what he calls Filicites fimbriatus, 

 found at Deep Run, Virginia. It is clearly an imperfect specimen of the 

 fructified form of this plant, and is much like the impression that the plant 

 represented in Plate XXIII, Fig. 2, might leave on a rock if imperfectly 

 preserved. 



Formation and locality. — Asterocarpus Virginiensis is quite widely dis- 

 tributed, but is not very abundant at any locality. It is found in the strata, 



