CYCADACEAE 99 



Plate 1 5 . 



A. Encephalartos Altensteinii Lehm. 



1. Female plant. 



2. Scale (sporophyll) of male cone with pollen bags, seen from below. 



3. Group of ripe pollen bags, 6/1. 



4. Pollen grain. 300/1. 



5. Scale of female cone, with nearly fully developed ovules. Seen from below, 

 hence the ovules partly hidden by the stalk of the scale. 



6. Scale of ripe cone, one of the two seeds in position. Seen from above. 



7. Ripe seed in longitudinal section, showing the large endosperm and the immature 

 embryo. 



8. Beetle (a weevil, Antliarhinus Zamiae, called Curculio zamiae by Thunberg as he 

 named this genus of plants "ZcwzV). See his Flora Cap. p. 430. 



9. Beetle {Derelomus languidus) from the flowers of E. Altensteinii, collected on both 

 sexes by Miss A. Pegler. 



B. E. villosus. Seedling with coralliform, apo-geotropic root. 



C. Moth. Zeronopsis leopardina. This moth deposits its eggs on the leaves of 

 several species of Encephalartos, and the larvae (see figure B) devour the young fronds 

 as long as these are soft and juicy. It is also found on Stangeria. 



The genus Encephalartos, which is nearly allied to the Australian genus 

 Macrozamia, is at present confined to South Eastern and Tropical Africa, its 

 furthest southern locality being near Algoa Bay, where it is represented by 

 E. horridus, while E. Lehmanni* with equally rigid and glaucous leaves, and 

 E. Friderici-Guilelmi with very narrow leaflets occur on the mountains of the 

 south eastern Karoo, viz. near Willowmore and Cradock. In former 

 geological periods the genus had a wider range, and although no fossil remains 

 have been found in South Africa as yet, they are known from some tertiary 

 beds of Europe, viz. in the island of Euboea. We may look upon the present 

 species as direct descendants of our cretaceous and tertiary floras, and some of 

 them may, for all we know, have existed in their present form at those remote 

 periods. 



The largest species known is E. Laurentianus de Wild, a native of the 

 Congo basin, where it reaches a height of 30 feet with leaves up to 20 feet 

 long, while the largest S. A. species, E. Altensteinii, rarely reaches one half that 

 size, its trunk being nearly cylindrical and up to 2 feet in diameter. 



In E. villosus the trunk is mostly hidden in the ground, bearing a rosette 

 of leaves 10 — 12 feet long (Plate 16, B). 



The pith of several species, e.g. E. caffer, is, on account of its starch, 

 prepared by the natives like sago and used as food, hence the names 

 kaffir bread and broodboom. 



* Named after Ch. Lehmann, a former director of the Botanic Gardens at Hamburg 

 (1845), who published various papers on Cycadaceae. 



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