Page:The Journal of Indian Botany.djvu/555

SOME OBSERVATIONS ON CYC AS IN LAHORE. 121 formed last in the cluster remain sterile, their pinnae remain small, the ovules are absent, and the pinnae are restricted to the upper part only. This reduction gradually leads to the sharply-pointed scales without any trace of the pinnae, but there is a complete series of in. termediate forms between the two extremes. The sterile intermediate forms very much resemble the sporophylls of Gycas circinalis without the ovules. {Vide fig. 2.)

The accompanying photograph shows a very curiously branched tree of Cycas circinalis. It is growing in the Lawrence gardens. Lahore. The tree is known to have been growing there for more than thirty years and on the basis of one leaf-cluster every other year is more than eighty years of age. The history is that the apex was cut off at the place were the first bifurcation is seen and a scar is present at the fork. But after that the tree has not been interfered with. The repeated dichotomies form a very interesting feature of the plant and remind one of the fossil Cycadophyta like Wielandiella. 1 Four distinct dichotomies can be traced from the base

Vide Scott. Evolution of Plants, page 89.