12(> JV. E. Stevens — New Jersey Palmoxylon. 



those found in longitudinal section being typical spiral vessels 

 with the coils fairly thick and rather close together. 



Tyloses. — One of the most interesting observations is that of 

 the presence in the vessels of both stem and roots of rounded, 

 rather thin-walled bodies which strongly resemble the tyloses 

 of living plants. There is, of course, a bare possibility that 

 these bodies are accretions of some sort, but they are so con- 

 stant in their appearance and so characteristic in their struc- 

 ture that the conclusion that they are tyloses seems unavoid- 

 able. Figure 8 shows a portion of a longitudinal section of a 

 stem vessel which contains several tyloses : fig. 9 shows the 

 tyloses in one of the vessels of a root bundle. So far as the 

 writer has been able to determine, tyloses have not been 

 described in any species of fossil palm. They have, however, 

 been observed in the wood of living palms.* 



While the amount of wood available for examination was, 

 to be sure, not large, tyloses were apparently more frequent in 

 the vessels of the root than in those of the stem. This is more 

 noteworthy since tyloses do not appear to have been recorded 

 in living palm roots. They have, however, been found to 

 occur in large numbers in the roots of some herbaceous plants 

 (DeBary); while Chryslerf found them occurring in the heart 

 of the root, as well as in the first growth of the axis of the 

 ovulate strobilus in Pinus. 



Fungi. — As noted above, no stem bundles were found in 

 which the phloem was preserved. Moreover, only a very small 

 amount of phloem was found in the roots. This may be due, 

 of course, to poor preservation, but it seems more reasonable 

 to attribute it to the action of a wood-destroying fungus, which 

 appears to be present. 



It is very difficult to represent satisfactorily on a flat surface 

 the course of the fungus hyphse, but figs. 10 and 11 give some 

 idea of the number of hyphse present in many of the vessels of 

 the stem and roots. Hyphse were equally abundant in the 

 phloem. That this is the mycelium of a parasitic or saprophy- 

 tic fungus seems reasonably certain since it is confined entirely 

 to the central cylinder, and particularly to the vascular por- 

 tions ; while not the slightest trace of it is found in the cortex. 

 If it were mycorrhiza, of course exactly the reverse would be 

 the case. Hyphse are rather abundant in the stem, noted 

 above as less well preserved than the roots, — a condition which 

 perhaps suggests that the fungus first infected the trunk and 



* De Baiy, A. — Comparative Anatomy of Phanerogams and Ferns. English 

 edition, Oxford, 1884 (p. 171). 



t Chrysler, M. A. — Tyloses in tracheids of conifers. New Phytologist, 

 7 : 198, 1908. 



