QE924
.N402

Newberry, J« S.

The flora of the Amboy clays.

QE924
.N402

•i^

Vol. XIII.

MARCH, 1886.

No. 3.

BULLETIN

OF THE

fcr^eij * Botenical

4 PNTHLY JOURNAL OF BOTANY,

Edited by

ELIZABETH G. BRITTON AND F. J. H. MERRILL

CONTENTS

Qft the Flora of Jhe Amboy Clays : J. S. Newberry,
Nomenclature of Fossil Dicotyledons : A. G. Nathorft,
A Curious Potato (with a cut) : A. F. Foerste,
Notes from Schenectady : J. H. Wibbe,
Note on Quercus Muhlenberj;ii : N. L. Britton,
Recent American Botanical Literature,
Botanical Notes,
Proceeding's of the Clitb,

38

39

39
40

41
47
48

NEW YORK

■ttF

•.•-^3^^!!^

TiiF. torrI':y botanical cll

OFFICIvRS FOR 1.SS6.

rrcsidcnt,
PROFESSOR JOHN S. NEWHERRY.

Vice-President, 'Jrc-nsurc-r,

THOMAS HOGG. \VM. H. RUDKIN.

According Secretary, Corresponding Secretary,

ARTHUR HOLLICK. M..RIA 0.\sTEEEE.'

Editor. Associate Editor,

ELIZABETH G. BRITTON. F. J. H. MERRILL.

Curator, Librarian,

MARIA O. STEELE. N. L. BRITTON.

Committee on Finance,
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Committee on Admissions,
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Library and Herbarium Committee.
N. L. BRITTON, MARIA O. STEELE,

HELENA C. GASKIN, ALICE C. RICH.

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8 o'clock, r. M. Botanists are cordially invited to attend.

TERMS for the Bulletin — one dollar per aimum — beginning vvitl th
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Memjers of the Club will please remit their subscriptions, together with theii
annual dues, for 1886, now payable, to Mr. \Vm H. Rudkin, Treasurer, 74 William
Street.

Terms for England and the Continent of Europe, 5 shillings. Agents for Europe,
Messes. DuLAU & Co., 37 Soho Square, London, England.

B.u:k Volumes. — The Bulletin was published from 1870 to 1875, inclusive, in
yearly volumes, and was indexed at the end of the five years. The price of these five
volumes is $3.75. The numbers from 1875 'o 1879, inclusive, were allowed to run on
as one volume (Vol. VI.), and were indexed at the end of the five years. The price of
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Orders for the above may be addressed to the Editors.

BULLETIN

OF THE

TORREY BOTANICAL CLUB

Vol. XIII.]

New York, March, 1886.

[No. 3.

TllA Flnra nf +h/v A«»k^.. ni_.

(TW^^^^^^-^-'^ ^^

/

„ ^. w. iv.ai uiipiessioiis, wliich are, to a large

extent, different in the different beds. Perhaps a hundred dis-
tinct species have been collected from them up to the present
time, and it is evident that they hold a very rich and interesting
flora. As the clays are of great economic importance, and are
likely to be worked at many places, perhaps for hundreds of
years, this flora will probably become better known than that of
any other geological formation except the Coal Measures. Un-
fortunately most of the leaf impressions hitherto obtained from
the clay pits have proved perishable— a thick sheet of carbon-
aceous matter occupying the place of the original leaf, and in
fresh specimens contrasting beautifully with the light colored clay,
but cracking, when dried, to a powder that may be blown off. with
the breath. For this reason the collections formerly made have
been lost, and the study of the flora has been delayed. Within
a few years past, however, beds have been found at South
Amboy and Woodbridge in which the leaves are represented by
a thin film of brown carbonaceous matter, or a coffee colored
stam, in which the nervation is distinctly discernible. From

Till-. TORRI'V BOTANICAL CU

OFFICKRS FOR 1886.

President,
PROFESSOR JOfiN S. NF.WUKRRV.

Vice-President, '^ rca surer,

TT-ir»iuAC Hor.r. WM. II. RUDKIN;

RITTON, ^"^-"^ MAKIA O. sir-r-J-iBr
HELENA C. GASKIN, ALICE C. RICH.

The Club meets regularly at Columbia College, ^()\.\x Street and Madison Avenu
New York City, on the second Tuesday of each month, except July and August,
8 o'clock, r. M. Botanists are cordially invited to attend.

TERMS for the BULLETIN— ONfc. DOLLAR per annum— beginning witl th
January Number. Communications for publication and subscriptions shouk b
addressed to the Editors, at Columbia College, New York. When money orders at
sent they should be made payable at Station H.

MEMiERS OF THE Club will please remit their subscriptions, together with theii
annual dues, for 1886, now payable, to Mr. Wm H. Rudkin, Treasurer, 74 William
Street.

Terms for England and the Continent of Europe, 5 shillings. Agents for Europ^
Messes. DULAU & Co., 37 Soho Square, London, England. «

B\CK VoLUMES.-The Bulletin was published from 1870 to 1875, inclusive, in
yearly volumes, and was indexed at the end of the five years. The price of these hve
volumes is S3.75. The numbers from 1875 to 1879, inclusive, were allowed to run on
as one volume (Vol. VI.), and were indexed at the end of the five years. The Pr.ce ol
this volume isSs.oo. Volumes VII. to XII. have been indexed separately. The price
of each is Si. 00.

Orders for the above may be addressed to the Editors.

BULLETIN

OF THE

TORREY BOTANICAL CLUB.

Vol. XIII.] New York, March, 1886. [No. 3.

The Flora of the Amboy Clays.

Bv J. S. Ne\v]]f:rry.

(Abstract.)

The Amboy clays of New Jersey represent the middle por-
tion of the Cretaceous system, and are equivalents of the Lower
Chalk of England. This has been known in a general way for
many years, since the clays contain angiosperm leaves, and this
botanical group, beginning in the earliest epoch of the Cretaceous
age, shows its first considerable development in the Middle Cre-
taceous; and the green-sands which overlie the clays are full of
the mollusks which are characteristic of the Upper Chalk.

The Amboy clays are several hundred feet in thickness, and
contain a great number of leaf impressions, which are, to a large
extent, different in the difterent beds. Perhaps a hundred dis-
tinct species have been collected from them up to the present
time, and it is evident that they hold a very rich and interesting
flora. As the clays are of great economic importance, and are
likely to be worked at many places, perhaps for hundreds of
years, this flora will probably become better known than that of
any other geological formation except the Coal Measures. Un-
fortunately most of the leaf impressions hitherto obtained from
the clay pits have proved perishable — a thick sheet of carbon-
aceous matter occupying the place of the original leaf, and in
fresh specimens contrasting beautifully with the light colored clay,
but cracking, when dried, to a powder that may be blown off. with
the breath. For this reason the collections formerly made have
been lost, and the study of the flora has been delayed. Within
a few years past, however, beds have been found at South
Amboy and Woodbridge in which the leaves are represented by
a thin film of brown carbonaceous matter, or a coffee colored
stain, in which the nervation is distinctly discernible. From

34

these beds 1 )i'. Britton, Mr. 1 lollick aiul Mr. I. II. Woolson have
obtained many hiiiidred .s[)eeiineiis which are permanent anil are
.satisfactory objects of ftudy. Tliese I have lately had under
consideration, iiave had most of them carefully drawn, and of
these drawiny^s have composed about fifty quarto plates, some of
which I now have the i)leasurc of exhibiting. This material
gives the first satisfactory view of the flora which it represents,
and enables me to make this contribution to a knowledge of the
vegetation, that flourished in the region about the mouth of the
Hudson, in the Cretaceous age.

It will, of course, be a long time before a full description of
this flora can be given, but the hundred species of ferns and ar-
borescent plants now before us may probably be regarded as a
fair sample of it ; and as a flora of similar botanical character has
been exhumed from rocks of about the same geological age in the "
interior of this continent, in Greenland and in Germany, we may
infer that this group of plants fairly represents the vegetation of
the temperate zone in the Northern Hemisphere at the middle of
the Cretaceous age.

As is known to most botanists and geologists, a great change in
the plantlifeofthe globetook place atthecloseofthepalaeozoicages.
Then the coal flora, consisting of acrogens with some gymnosperms
— lycopods, equiseta, and ferns with conifers — gave place to what
is known as the viesozoic flora, which consisted mainly of cycads,
conifers and ferns ; the cycads predominating and giving a special
aspect to the vegetation. In the Triassic and the Jurassaic ages,
and through the first epoch of the Cretaceous age, this flora ap-
parently flourished over the whole world. Toward the middle
of the Cretaceous age angiosperms began to appear and soon
became the prevailing style of vegetation ; this has continued,
with many changes of degree but little of kind, to the present day.

The beginnings of the angiospermous flora have apparently
been found in the Kome beds of Greenland and in the Potomac
group of Virginia, of which the flora is now being studied by
Prof. W. M. Fontaine. Here a few angiosperms are found min-
gled with an abundant flora of cycads, conifers and ferns, but as
yet without any discovered transitional forms between these
botanical groups.

35

in the Amboy clays and in the Dakota rocks of the West,
which next succeed in time the Potomac clays, the angiosperms
are predofninant and exhibit a variety and a botanical rank which
are surprising. The Dakota flora which has been illustrated in
the important memoirs of Mr. Lesquereux and the less volumin-
ous contributions of Prof. Hear and myself, now stands repre-
sented by about 200 nominal species, of which 30 are cryptogams
and gymnosperms ; the remainder are angiosperms. Excluding
fragmentary and doubtful material, we have about 140 species
which, whatever their botanical relations may be, are certainly
distinct from each other ; and of these more than three-fourths are
arborescent angiosperms.

The flora of the Amboy clays is closely related to that of the
Dakota group — most of the genera and some of the species being
identical — so that we may conclude they were nearly contem-
poraneous, though the absence in New Jersey of the Fort Benton
and Niobrara groups of the upper Miijsouri and the apparent syn-
chronism of the New Jersey marls and the Pierre group indicate
that the Dakota is a little the older.

At least one-third of the species of the Amboy clays seem to
be identical with leaves found in the upper Cretaceous clays of
Greenland and Aachen ( Aix la Chapelle), which not only indicates a
chronological parallelism, but shows a remarkable and unexpected
similarity in the vegetation of these widely separated countries in
the middle and last half of the Cretaceous age. The botanical
character of the flora of the Amboy clays will be seen from the
following brief synopsis :

Algcs. A small and delicate form allied to Chondrites.

Eqiiiseta and Fungi. None yet discovered.

Ferns. Twelve species generally similar and in part identical
with those described by Heer from the Cretaceous beds of Green-
land and referred to the genera Dicksonia, Gleichcnia dindAspidinm.

Lycopods. None vet discovered.

Cycads. Two species probably identical with the forms from
Greenland described by Heer under the names of Podozamites
niarginatus and P. tenuinervis.

Conifers. Fourteen species belonging to the genera Mori-
conia. Brae hyphy Hum, Cimni7ighamites, Pinus, Sequoia, and

3r>

others rcfcncil by llccr lo Jniii/'cnis, Liboccdnts, Frcnclopsis,
Thuya and Datiunara. Of these tlic most abundant and most
interesting are .]foricoiiia cyclotoxon — the most beautiful of eoni-
fers — and Cuuniiii^liainitcs clci^aiis, botli of which occur in the
Cretaceous clays of Aachen, Prussia, ami I'atoot, Greenland. The
liracliyphylhiin was a large and strong species with imbricated
cones eight inches in length.

The angiosperms form about seventy species, which include
three o{ Magnolia, four of Liriodendron, three or four of Salix,
three of CclastropJiylhiin (of which one is identical with a Green-
land species), one Cclastrus (also found in Greenland), four or five
Aralias, two Sassafras, one Cinuaiiionnnn, one Hcdcra, with
leaves that are apparently identical with those described by Heer
as \iQ\o\\^\xi^\.o Andromeda, Cissitcs, Corftns, Dewalquca, Diospyros,
Eucalyptus, Ficiis, Ilex, Juglans, Laurus, Menispcrmites, Myrica,
Myrsine, Prnnns, Rhaviiuis, and others not yet determined.

Some of the Aralias had palmately lobed leaves nearly a foot
in diameter — and two of the tulip trees (Liriodendron) had leaves
quite as large as those of the living species. Oneof these had deeply
lobed leaves like those of the white oak. Of the other the leaves
resembled tliose of the recent tulip tree, but were larger. Both
had the peculiar emargination and the nervation of Liriodendron.

Among the most interesting plants of the collection are fine
species of Bauhinia and Hyniencca. Of these the first is repre-
sented by a large number of leaves, some of which are six or
seven inches in diameter. They are deeply bilobed and have the
peculiar and characteristic form and nervation of the leaves of
this genus. Bauhinia is a leguminous genus allied to Cercis, and
now inhabits tropical and warm temperate climates in both hem-
ispheres. Only one species occurs in the United States, Jnxuhinia
lunarioides, Gray, found by Dr. Bigelow on the Rio Grande.

Hymencea is another of the leguminosa; and inhabits tropical
America. A species of this genus has been founti in the Upper
Cretaceous of France, but quite different from the one before us,
in which the leaves are much larger, and the leaflets are united
in a common petiole, which is winged ; this is a modification not
found in the living species, and one which brings it nearer to
Baiihi7iia.

37

But the most surprising discovery yet made is that of a num-
ber of quite large helianthoid flowers which I have called Palos-'
anthus. These are three to four inches in diameter, and exhibit a
scaly involucre enclosing what much resembles a fleshy receptacle
.with achenia. From the border of this radiate a number of ray
florets, one to two inches in length, which are persistent and must
have been scarious like those of Heliochrysiim. Though these
flowers so much resemble those of the Composites, we are not yet
warranted in asserting that such is certainly their character. In
the Jurassic rocks of Europe and India some flowers not very
unlike these have been found, which have been named Williain-
sonia and referred to cycads by Carruthers. A similar fossil has
been found in the Cretaceous rocks of Greenland and named by
Hear, Williamsonia cretacea, but he questions the reference of the
genus to the Cycadew and agrees with Nathorst in considering all
the species of Willianisonia as parasitic flowers allied to Brugman-
sia or Rafflesia. The Marquis of Saporta regards them as mono-
cotyledons similar to Pandaniis. More specimens of the flowers
now exibited will perhaps prove, what we can now only regard as
probable, that the CompositcB like the LegnininoscE, Magnoliacecs,
Celastracece, and other highly organized plants formed part of the
Cretaceous flora. No composite flowers have before been found
in the fossil state, and as these are among the most complex and
specialized forms of florescence, it has been supposed that they
belonged only to the recent epoch, where they were the result of
a long series of formative changes.

The presence of Hymencea, Bauhinia and Cinnamoniuin might
be considered as proof that the climate in which these plants grew
was tropical, but the willows, magnolias, aralias and other elements
in the flora are rather indicative of a warm temperate climate.

No palms have yet been found in the lower or middle Creta-
ceous, though they are abundant in the upper Cretaceous and
Tertiary beds in localities far north of New York. We may there-
fore infer that when the Amboy clays wer'* deposited palms had
not yet appeared in the vegetation of the globe.

A large number of fruits have been found in the Amboy clays,
but with the exception of those which belong to the conifers and
cycads their botanical relations are not yet clearly made out,

On the Nomenclature of the Leaves of Fossil Dicotyledons.*

In Vol. XXV., Nos. I and 2, of the " J^otaiiisches Centralblatt,"
A. G. Nathonst jiublishes an interesting article in which he
discusses the difficulties \\liich present themselves to the pal.x-on-
tologist in classifying and naming fossil dicotyledons on the
characters of their leaves only.

The author proposes the following methods which he intends
to employ in his future publications, and invites his co-workers
in this field to adopt the same rule, viz :

Those species of which leaves only are known, are to be
named after the genus with which they agree best, with the addi-
tion of the termination — pJiylliivi. Therefore, we ought not to
say Magnolia Capellini, Hecr., but MagnolipJiylhun Capellini, etc.
Such a name would indicate that the leaf in question seems to
resemble most the leaves of a Magnolia, and therefore possibly
belongs to that genus. If afterwards, together with this leaf,
flower and fruit should be found, which, without any doubt, be-
long to Magnolia, the leaf could then be classified with Mag-
nolia. In the case of leaves for which analagous forms are
not to be found among living plants, independent generic names
are to be used, as heretofore, e. g., Credneria, ProtopJiyllnm, etc.

Another part of the article refers to the identification of fossil
leaves found in dififerent localities, at great distances from each
other. In most such cases slight differences in form, etc., are,
at present, not taken into consideration, and the leaves are placed
in the same species. Thus the leaf A is identified with the leaf
B (from a distant locality), afterward C with B, then D with C,
and finally D with A ; in reality, the name of this supposed
single species may possibly stand for a whole group of species.

In order to rnect this difificulty the author proposes to employ
a ternary nomenclature. Suppose a leaf were found in Japan
which resembles Acer trilobatiim so much that it would not be
advisable to make a new species of it, although the similarity is
not perfect ; this leaf ought to be called Acer trilobatuvi Japon-
ic um.

* Abstracted by Professor Jos. Schrenk .

New York Botanical Garden Library

QE924 .N402 gen

Newberry, John Stro/The flora of the Amb

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