THE 



GEOLOGICAL MAGAZINE 



No. XLVI.— APRIL, 1868. 



I. — British Fossil Pandane^. 

 By Wm. Carruthers, F.L.S., F.G.S., Botanical Department, British Museum. 



(PLATE IX.) 



THEEE is room for considerable difference of opinion as to the limit 

 of the order Pandanece or " Screw-pines." However extended it 

 is made there can be no doubt that Nipa has closer affinities with the 

 palms than with the screw-pines. I shall therefore exclude the 

 remarkable fruits from the Lower Eocene of Sheppy to which 

 Brongniart applied the name Pandanocarpum, altered afterwards by 

 Bowerbank m accordance with the more precise determination of 

 the affinities of the fruits to Nipadites, a change in which Brongniart 

 acquiesced. 



More nearly allied to Pandanem are the CijclanthecB with their 

 scaly flowers, polyspermous, many-celled fruits, and fan-shaped 

 leaves, and the Freycinetiece agreeing with Cyclanthece in the struc- 

 ture of their fruit, but with Pandanece proper in their flowers and 

 foliage. Whether these three closely allied groups form only a 

 single natural order is not of much importance in connection with 

 an enquiry into the fossil Pandanece of the British rocks, inasmuch 

 as these all, as far as known, belong to the restricted group Pan- 

 daneis, represented by the genus Pandanus of the younger Linnaeus, 

 now split up by Gaudichaud, De Yriese, and Hasskarl, into several 

 divisions considered by them of generic value. 



The recent Pandanece, thus restricted, are arborescent plants, the 

 stem generally branching dichotomously and sending down aerial 

 roots, with long, linear-lanceolate leaves, their margins almost 

 always spiny, and their bases amplexicaul, leaving after decay 

 annular scars, which have suggested the name screw-pine, the latter 

 half of the term referring to the external resemblance of the plants 

 to Bromeliace'ce or pine-apples. The flowers are dioecious and naked, 

 and the fruits are composed of numerous one-celled and one-seeded 

 fibrous drupes congregated singly or in compact parcels into large 

 spheroidal or oblong heads. The plants of this group live in the 

 marshy forests of the moist tropical and sub-tropical regions of the old 

 world, their head-quarters being in the Malayan Archipelago* and in 

 Madagascar ; some extend as far north as Japan and the Himalayas. 



Specimens of foliage referred by Ettingshausen to this order, 



VOL. V. — NO. XLVI. 11 



