262 FLORA OF LOWER COAL MEASURES OF MISSOURL 



CORDAIANTHUS OA'ATUS Lx. 



PI. LXXII.Figs.l,-'. 



1878. Cordaianthus gemmifer Or. 'By.. Lesquereux, Proc. Am. Phil. Soc.,vol. xvii, p. 326, 



pL xlvii, fig. 5. 



1879. Cordaianthus gemmifer Gv. 'Ey., Lesquereux, Uoal Flora, Atlas, p. 16, pi. Ixxvi, 



figs. 5, 5fl; text, vol. iii (1884), p. 914. 



1880. Cordaianthus ovatm Lesquereux, Goal Flora, vol. ii, p. 545, pi. 3.xxvi, figs. 5, 5«. 



The axis of this species, as seen in the original type, No. 9187 of the 

 Lacoe collection,^ is robust, distinctly and rather coarsely striate. The gem- 

 mules ai-e open, ovate or ovate-oval, close at the apex, and apparently 

 arranged four to a complete turn of the spiral. The scales are ovate or 

 ovate-lanceolate, acute, rather fleshy toward the base, and distinctly cariuate 

 toward the top, the keel being somewhat prominent in the almost mucronate 

 apex. Usually they are erect and fairly clearly defined, numbering perhaps 

 40 to 50 to the gemmule. The bracts are very broad at the base, contracting 

 rapidly with a concave margin to a narrow lineate rigid spine of variable 

 length, though always longer than the gemmule. The enlaa-ged detail, 5fl on 

 pi. Ixxvi of the Coal Flora, appears to have been drawn from some specimen 

 other than the original of fig, 5. The same features are seen in No. 9192, 

 another of the specimens originally studied, and in No. 9202, illustrated in 

 PI. LXXII, Fig. 2, and No. 9210, which show better the fragments of bracts, 

 often exceeding twice the length of the gemmule to the point of fracture, while 

 the gemmules themselves vary somewhat as to their distance along the axis. 



In No. 9209, a specimen from Missouri labeled with the above name 

 by Lesquereux, we find a smooth axis bearing rather large crowded gem- 

 mules with long scales. So far as the character of the latter have weight 

 the S'pecimen would seem rather to belong to Cordaianthus dichotomus Lx., 

 if, indeed, that species is really distmct from the one under consideration. 

 The striation of the axis is not, however, constantly visible in the specimens 

 of C. ovatus, since it seems to depend on the degree of compression, and shows 

 only in those portions of the stem that are slig'htl)- decorticated. In most 

 of the specimens from Penns3^1vania referred by Professor Lesquereux to 

 this species, including Nos. 9190 and 9191 of the Lacoe collection, originals 

 used in the description of the species, the axis is somewhat convex and shows 



'The fragment figured in the Coal Flora is from the vicinity of Clinton, Missouri; not from 

 Ciiiinelton, Pennsylvania, .i* inferred from the habitat named on p. 546 of that work. 



