But the structure of these two genera admits likewise of another explanation, to which I have already adverted.
If, however, the ovula in Cycadeae and Coniferae be really produced on the surface of an ovarium, it might, perhaps, though not necessarily, be expected that their male flowers should differ from those of all other phaenogamous plants, and in this difference exhibit some analogy to the structure of the female flower.

But in Cycadeae, at least, and especially in Zamia, the resemblance between the male and female spadices is so great, that if the female be analogous to an ovarium, the partial male spadix must be considered as a single anthera, producing on its surface either naked grains of pollen, or pollen subdivided into masses, each furnished with its proper membrane.
Both these views may at present, perhaps, appear equally paradoxical; yet the former was entertained by Linnaeus, who expresses himself on the subject in the following terms, Pulvis floridus in Cycade minime pro Antheris agnoscendus est sed pro nudo polline, quod unusquisque qui unquam pollen antherarum in plantis examinavit fatebitur.* That this opinion, so confidently held by Linnaeus, was never adopted by any other botanist, seems in part to have arisen from his having extended it to dorsiferous Ferns.

Limited to Cycadeae, however, it does not appear to me so very improbable, as to deserve to be rejected without examination.

It receives, at least, some support from the separation, in several cases, especially in the American Zamiae, of the grains into two distinct, and sometimes nearly marginal, masses, representing, as it may be supposed, the lobes of an anthera; and also from their approximation in definite numbers, generally in fours, analogous to the quaternary union of the grains of pollen, not unfrequent in the antherae of several other families of plants.

The great size of the supposed grains of pollen, with the thickening and regular bursting of their membrane, may be said to be circumstances obviously connected with their production and persistence on the surface of an anthera, distant from the female flower; and with this economy, a corresponding enlargement of the contained particles or fovilla might also be expected.