85 
taken as the index of a new species. In any case the presence 
of scattering bract groups with marked development of ra- 
mentum indicates the normal cycadeoid type. Also, the very 
marked variation in the size of the leaf has a special interest. 
A few of the leaf bases on one side of the stem are as large as 
those of C. marylandica. But over the whole of the opposite 
side the bases are all very small. Taken with the low, sub- 
globular stem and the heavy ramentum, these features complete 
the picture of a slow-growing desert plant producing sparse 
crowns, or only scattering foliage leaves, at varying intervals, 
with the terminal bud enveloped, for the greater part of the 
time, in a thick crown of scale leaves. 
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