Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 May 2009
There is room for considerable difference of opinion as to the limit of the order Pandaneœ or “Screw-pines.” However extended it is made there can be no doubt that Nipa has closer affinities with the palms than with the screw-pines. I shall therefore exclude the remarkable fruits from the Lower Eocene of Sheppy to which Brongniart applied the name Pandanocarpum, altered afterwards by Bowerbank in accordance with the more precise determination of the affinities of the fruits to Nipadites, a change in which Brongniart aequiesced.
1 The external markings of the stems found by Mr. W. H. Bensted in the Iguanodon quarry, and named by König Dracœna Benstedii, are more like those of a Pandanus than a Dracaena, but the remains of wood in the interior of these steins suggest doubts as to whether they belong to either the one or the other. I hope to obtain a seeiion of one of the stems and to examine the minute structure of the wood, and I may then be able to determine, with more certainty, their systematic position.