A Lower Cretaceous Species of Schizaeaceae from 
Eastern North America. 
BY 
EDWARD W. BERRY. 
Associate in Palaeobotany, Johns Hopkins University . 
With Plate XII and one Figure in the Text. 
HE present brief communication is published in order to demonstrate 
-1- that certain leaf impressions from the lowermost Cretaceous of the 
Atlantic coastal plain, which have been referred to the Ginkgoales, are to 
be referred to the Filicales, and considerable evidence will be brought 
forward for the reference of these remains to the family Schizaeaceae or 
to the Mesozoic representative of the modern family. 
When Professor Fontaine undertook the study of the flora of the 
Potomac group, which culminated in Monographs XV and XLVIII of 
the U.S. Geological Survey, a variety of Baiera- like forms were figured 
and described. These were made the basis of the genus Baieropsis referred 
to the order Ginkgoales, in which ten species were described, and the 
genus Acrostichopteris referred to the Filicales, in which five species were 
described. In a re-study of the original, as well as a large amount of 
additional material, it became obvious that the specific differentiations 
which had been put forward were absent in nature, and that the remains 
of both Baieropsis and Acrostichopteris were for the most part congeneric 
in cases where they were not specifically identical, and that all were indu- 
bitably ferns, as shown by the habit of the fronds and their manner of 
subdivision and fructification. These fructification characters are obscure 
in all but two of the forms, and hence in a recent revision 1 the writer has 
dropped the name Baieropsis altogether and referred all of the forms except 
these two to the genus Acrostichopteris , whose exact position among the 
Filicales remains unknown. 
The two forms above referred to as showing fructification characters 
of value, although described by Professor Fontaine as Baieropsis macrophylla 
and Baieropsis expansa , prove to be identical. They have furnished certain 
rather definite criteria for their reference to the family Schizaeaceae, using 
1 Berry, Proceedings U.S. Natural Museum, vol. xxxviii, pp. 625-632, 1910, 
Annals of Botany, Vol. XXV. No. XCVII, January, 1911.] 
