Abstract
AN instructive résumé of recent work among fossil plants is given by the Marquis de Saporta in the Revue générale de Botanique, vol. ii., 1890. It appears that mosses were almost certainly represented in the Palæozoics, a species allied to Polytrichum having been discovered at Commentry, in France. Rarely as the fructification of ferns is preserved in the Coal-measures, twenty species are now investigated, confirming the view that the Palæozoic species differed widely from the present. Half of them are most nearly related to the Marat-tiaceæ, whilst others show affinities with the Osmundaceae, Gleicheniaceæ, and Hymenophyllum, the vast order of Polypodiaceæ, and the Cyatheæ being unrepresented. Among the most striking discoveries in the Coal-measures is a fern trunk several yards in length, with its fronds attached. The view that the Calamarias were in part Gymnosperms is all but universally abandoned, and the close affinity of the Lepidodendrons and Sigillarias and their cryptogamic nature everywhere admitted, so that a long controversy is ended, and the truth of Prof. Williamson's contentions definitely established. Links in the chain of evolution between Cryptogams and Gymnosperms still elude our search, and trie earliest vegetation of which we have any complete knowledge already presents well-developed Gymnosperms in the shape of the deciduous Cordaϊtes, a few Cycads and obscure Taxads allied to Ginkgo. At the same time, we get rid of the very puzzling Spirangium, so often regarded as a possible Palæozoic Angiosperm, but now relegated by MM. Renault and Zeiller to the animal kingdom as the egg of some member of the shark family.
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GARDNER, J. Recent Research Among Fossil Plants. Nature 42, 521–522 (1890). https://doi.org/10.1038/042521a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/042521a0