Berry — Nipa-palm in the North American Eocene. 57 



Art. IV. — A Nvpa-jpalm in the North American Eocene /* 

 by Edward W. Berry. 



The existing Nipa-palm, which Sir Joseph D. Hooker 

 describes so graphically in his Himalayan Journals (1891), is 

 an exceedingly interesting plant to the ecologist, the system a- 

 tist, the geographer and the geologist. To the ecologist 

 because of its unusual habitat in brackish or marine waters. 

 To the systematist because of its somewhat isolated position 

 among the palms and its supposed affinity with the Panda- 

 nacese. To the plant-geographer and the geologist because of 

 its distribution by ocean currents and the extended range of its 

 closely allied ancestors of Eocene times. 



The genus Nipa has but a single species in the existing flora, 

 that is to say, it is monotypic, and monotypic genera have been 

 found to have an exceedingly interesting and instructive geo- 

 logical history whenever it has been possible to decipher the 

 records of the past bearing upon that history. 



The modern Nipa plant is a stemless palm with a graceful 

 cluster of gigantic, pinnately compound leaves, sometimes as 

 much as twenty-five feet in length, rising directly above the 

 surface of the water. It inhabits the tidal waters of the 

 Indian ocean, forming brakes or thickets on the low swampy 

 islands of the Sunderbunds, and ranges from India through 

 the Malay archipelago to the Philippines, competing with the 

 various species of mangroves for possession of the tidal flats. 

 The female inflorescence consists of a close cluster of large 

 obovate ribbed nuts, forming a spherical cluster or head that 

 is nine or ten inches in diameter. The water in the delta of 

 the Ganges is often covered with these floating nuts just as 

 were the deltas around the Paris basin in Eocene times. Hun- 

 dreds of the pyritized nuts of Nipadites are found in the 

 London clays of Sheppey, which represents part of an Eocene 

 estuary. As long ago as 1757 Parsonsf mentioned these Eng- 

 lish fossil fruits and they were well figured by Parkinson;}: 

 in 1811, who compared them with the fruits of the existing 

 Cocos. Similar fossils from Belgium were described and 

 figured by Burtin§ under the name of Coco-nuts in 1784. 

 Brongniart| in 1828 proposed three species for the reception 



* Published with the permission of the Director of the U. S. Geological 

 Survey. 



f Parsons, An account of some fossil fruits and other bodies found in the 

 island of Sheppey, Phil. Trans. Eoy. Soc. Lond., vol. 1, pt. i, p. 396, 1757. 



% Parkinson, Organic Remains of a former World, London, 1811, p. 448, 

 pi. 6, 7. 



s Burtin, Oryctographie de Bruxelles, p. 118, pi. 30A, 1784. 



|| Brongniart, Prodrome d'une Histoire des Vegetaux fossiles, pp. 121, 135, 

 1828. 



