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BOTANICAL GAZETTE 



observers might make new species of them. In the Botanical 

 Garden at Durban, South Africa, Mr. Wylie showed me a vigor- 

 ous Stangeria with leaves a meter long. The leaflets were 45 cm. 

 long, and so deeply incised that they were almost pinnate. Some 

 taxonomists, doubtless, would regard this plant as a distinct 

 species. In Dioon and Bowenia the character of the leaf margin 

 is so rigidly fixed and so persistently transmitted from one gener- 

 ation to another that it is entitled to rank as a specific character; 

 but in Stangeria the character of the margin is so fluctuating that 

 even the almost bipinnate Durban plant should not be regarded 

 as specifically different from forms with entire leaflets. 



Field observations 



My field observations on Stangeria began at Ngoye, near 

 Mtunzini in Zululand, about 100 miles north of Durban, and 

 extended to East London, about 275 miles south of Durban. 

 Stangeria certainly extends farther north, just how much farther 

 I was not able to determine; and its western limit is west of East 

 London. I did not find it at Port Elizabeth, about 150 miles west 

 of East London, or even at Grahamstown, or Trapps Valley, about 

 half-way between East London and Port Elizabeth; but Mr. 

 George Rattray, of Selborn College, East London, has reported it 

 from Port Elizabeth, and he regards this as about the western 

 limit of its range. His extensive knowledge of South African cycads 

 in the field enables him to speak with authority upon their geo- 

 graphical distribution. 



In the field, Stangeria presents two forms, one growing on the 

 open grass veldt and the other in the shade of bushes or trees, the 

 shaded form being much larger and resembling more nearly the 

 cultivated specimens. Pearson (9) has contrasted the two 

 forms as Stangeria paradoxa, the species originally described from 

 the shaded Natal form, and Stangeria sp., the open grass veldt 

 form; but he had seen both forms in the field, and consequently 

 hesitated to give a specific name to the second form. Rattray, 

 who lives in a Stangeria region, and who has studied the genus 

 throughout its range, believes there is only one species. Before 

 I left South Africa, I had come to the same conclusion. I dug up 



