BENNETTITEAE 589 



strobili, both young and old, where the stamens were 

 not preserved, Dr. Wieland was able to detect the 

 remains of the staminate disc, seated on the rim of 

 the receptacle. The genus Cycadella appears to have 

 had precisely the same floral structure as Cycadeoidea. 

 In a very small fructification of Cycadella wyomingensis, 

 only 7 mm. in diameter, a whorl of thirteen stamens, 

 surrounding the central receptacle, was found, just as 

 in Cycadeoidea ingens. 



From the comparison of the younger and older 

 stages (as, for example, in C. dacotensis), it appears 

 that as the fruit matured the expanding gynaecium 

 encroached on and ultimately filled the space originally 

 occupied by the whorl of stamens. Dr. Wieland inclines 

 to the view that the flowers were protandrous, the 

 pollen being ripe before the ovules were ready for 

 fertilisation ; a detailed knowledge of the condition of 

 the ovules in flowers of different ages will be necessary 

 before this point can be decided. In a magnificent 

 fossil Cycad, Cycadeoidea Reichenbachiana, found about 

 the year 1753 near Cracow in Poland, and probably 

 of Lower Cretaceous age, Dr. Wieland has recently 

 demonstrated the bisexual structure of the flowers, 

 which appear to agree in all essential points with those 

 of C. dacotensis ; the number of stamens in a whorl is 

 sixteen in C. Reichenbachiana. This is the first time that 

 the presence of bisexual flowers, like those of the 

 American Cycadophytes, has been clearly observed in 

 a European species, though, as we have seen, the 

 indirect evidence left little doubt as to the facts. 1 



1 Wieland, Historic Fossil Cycads, above cited. See also F. Lester 

 Ward, " A Famous Fossil Cycad," Amer.Journ. of Science, vol. xviii. 1904. 



