Remarks on the Natural order Cycadece. 47 



the female flowers in Cycadeae and Coniferse."* The elder Richard, 

 in his admirable " Memoire sur les Coniferes ct les Cycadees," pre- 

 pared about the same time, and published afterwards by his son, had 

 indeed, with great ingenuity, established the affinity between Cyca- 

 dese and Coniferae ; but his views respecting the female flower and 

 seed of both these tribes differ widely from those of Brown, and are 

 now generally admitted by the first botanists to be erroneous. The 

 female flower of these orders consists, according to Richard, of a 

 monosepalous perianth or calyx, enveloping or adhering to an uni- 

 locular ovarium, which contains the true seed. He considers the 

 aperture at the apex of the outer coat to be the style, and the pro- 

 jecting point of the second, the stigma. Brown, on the contrary, 

 suggested that the calyx, &tc. of Richard, are but the membranes 

 of the ovula, and in the mature state the integuments of the seed ; 

 in short, that the bodies called by Richard and other writers the fe- 

 male flowers, are naked ovula, borne upon the margins of a con- 

 tracted leaf, which last may be considered as an imperfect and open 

 ovarium. The impregnation he supposed to take place through the 

 foramen of the ovulum, (the perforated stigma of Richard,) there'be- 

 ing (contrary to the usual structure in phenogamous plants) no style 

 or stigma through which the pollen can find its way to that body. 

 These ideas, so startling and paradoxical at first sight, were slowly 

 received even by the most acute botanists, but have finally been al- 

 most universally adopted. The so-called naked seeds of Linnasus 

 having been demonstrated to be one-seeded fruits, it appears that the 

 Cycadese and Coniferse alone have the peculiarity of producing truly 

 naked seeds, and that they compose therefore a distinct natural group, 

 to which the name of Gymnospermse has very appropriately been 

 given. 



Aside from an examination of the ovula themselves, and their in- 

 teguments, the botanist who studies the structure of the organs of 

 reproduction in Cycadece, cannot but be convinced, that what were 

 formerly called pistillate flowers are simply ovula in the first place, 

 and afterwards naked seeds. The modified leaf, bearing the ovula 

 upon its face or margin, is undoubtedly a carpellum in an imperfect 

 state of development, the seeds of which would be enclosed in an 

 ovarium, if the edges of that carpellary leaf were folded together in 

 the usual manner. In Cycas circinalis, the ordinary appearance of 

 the pinnated leaf is so far depavted from as to exhibit in fact a flai 



* Vide Appendix to Capt. King's Vo}^age, p. 22. 



