Page:The Journal of Indian Botany.djvu/556

122 to the apex along one side of the tree. Another curious feature of the tree is that at some places the female sporophylls do not arise on all sides of the growing point as is normally the case but are developed only on one side. This may possibly indicate a tendency to variation in the position of the female cone from terminal to lateral, but nothing definite can be said about this matter without further investigation.

Since writing the above the writer has seen two more specimens of apparently the same species growing in the Royal Botanic Garden at Calcutta which are also branched in the same way. It is probable that the dichotomy is not real but only due to the growth of some of the buds which are so common on the stem of this plant. It may also be mentioned that Brandis (Indian Trees) says that Cycas Rumphii is often branched.

1. Brandis. Indian Trees.

2. Chamberlain. Living Cycads.

3. Coulter and Chamberlain. Gymnosperms, 1917.

4. Le Goc. Effect of Foreign Pollination on Cycas Rumphii, Ann. Roy. Bot. Gard. Peradeniya, 1917, 6.

5. Scott. The Evolution of Plants.

1. Sporophylls of Cycas revoluta with unripe and ripe ovules.

2. Transition from a sporophyil to a scale.

3. Cycas circinalis showing peculiar habit.