Notes on South African Cycacls. 345 



Cycas, the cones are terminal on the stem, and that the latter 

 in consequence becomes a sympodium. This is not true for 

 Encephalartos Friderici Guilielmi nor for E. Altensteinii. In both 

 cases we have in both sexes a group of three to six * cones arranged 

 symmetrically round the apex (Plate V., tig. 1.). Later, when the 

 apex resumes growth, the cones are displaced radially, and the next 

 crown of leaves appears in the centre of the whorl of cones. It is 

 clear, therefore, that in these species the summit of the vegetative 

 cone remains vegetative and continues the growth of the stem. 



Encephalartos villosus, Lem. 

 (Bot. Mag. t. 6654.) 

 (Plate VII. , fig. 2.) 



This species is quite as abundant as E. Altensteinii in the East 

 London bush. It appears that it is confined to shady situations 

 (Plate VII., fig. 2), and never occurs on the open veld. The stem, 

 said to be " rarely developed in imported and cultivated specimens " 

 (Thiselton-Dyer in Bot. Mag., I.e.), seems to be always subterranean 

 in its native bush ; it is large and tuberous, and is covered by stout 

 leaf-bases. The scale-leaves are densely villous. Apogeotropic 

 roots arise from the top of the main root. Its leaves are longer and 

 fewer in number than those of E. Altensteinii, but in other respects 

 resemble them. Its range is extensive. It occurs in Natal, where, 

 as I am informed by Mr. Medley Wood, "it is always found in 

 shade, and the trunk never appears above the ground ; " at Kentani 

 in the Transkei {Miss Pegler) ; abundantly in the neighbourhood of 

 East London ; and I have received a cone from Messrs. Smith Bros., 

 of Uitenhage, though I do not know that it occurs in the wild state 

 so far west as this. Mr. James Sim writes that between East 

 London and Kingwilliamstown it does not extend more than 20 miles 

 inland. 



In some localities at least this species rarely cones under natural 

 conditions. Miss Pegler has sent me one male cone from Kentani, 

 and has informed me of the existence there of another and of a plant 

 surrounded by young seedlings; she states, however, that "cones 

 are rare." From Mr. J. Sim I have also received a female cone 

 obtained in the Grey Forest, East London. Messrs. Wood and 

 Eattray, of East London, who have the plants in the immediate 

 neighbourhood under constant observation, have never found cones, 



* But sometimes, apparently, in E. Friderici Guilielmi, the cone "ex apice 

 caudicis solus egreditur et erectus " (Lehmann). 



