Makyland Geological Survey 391 



especially with the Tasmanian genus Arthrotaxis of Don and the arau- 

 carian species Araucaria imhricata. 



Bracliyphyllum may be defined as a genus of arborescent conifers the 

 twigs of which are thick and club-shaped, irregularly distichous in their 

 mode of branching. The leaves are squamate, very short, thick, 

 appressed, and densely crowded. Phyllotaxis spiral. In life the leaves 

 must have been more or less fleshy, mutual pressure causing them to 

 assume a pentagonal or hexagonal outline, with a dorsal, slightly pro- 

 jecting carina or boss becoming more or less obliterated with age. Leaf 

 surface more or less striated, the striae converging to the obtuse apical 

 point (at least this is true of our American Cretaceous species). The 

 leaf-scars on old branches are said to be rhomboidal and continuous, 

 remotely suggestive of Lepidodendron. 



A most remarkable species of this genus is Bracliyphyllum spinosum 

 Seward,^ of the English Wealden, a large robust form whose lateral 

 branches have become reduced to stout pointed spines about 3 cm. in 

 length and 5 mm. in diameter at the base, where they are covered with 

 reduced leaves, furnishing the only instance among the gymnosperms 

 known to the writer where the branches are reduced to spines. 



A variety of cones have been referred to Bracliyphyllum usually upon 

 the unreliable evidence of association in the same stratum. Even when 

 cones are found _in actual connection with the leafy twigs their preserva- 

 tion is such that positive evidence of botanical relationship is not avail- 

 able. Newberry^ describes a large cylindrical cone with a length 

 of 20 cm^ and a diameter of 4 cm. and having spatulate scales, which 

 he is quite positive is the cone of the Brachyphyllum so common 

 in the upper part of the Earitan clays of iSTew Jersey. As 

 against these cones described by Kewberry most cones referred to 

 Brachyphyllum have been small and somewhat spheroidal in shape. 

 Thus Zeiller describes branches of Brachyphyllum from the Lias of 

 Madagascar which bore small ovoid cones with rhomboidal scales very 

 suggestive of Sequoia and he seems to think it probable that some of 



^ Seward, Wealden FL, pt. 11, 1895, p. 215, pi. xvii, figs. 1-6. 



^Newberry, Mon. U. S. Geol. Surv., vol. xxvi, 1896, p. 51, pi. vii, figs. 3, 4. 6. 



