Abstract
NOTWITHSTANDING the small size and comparative scarcity of the plants belonging to this Palæozoic genus, they have long attracted a rather unusual amount of attention. This has been partly due to their peculiar external forms, which suggested even to the earliest observers the idea of resemblances to the Marsiliæ; but the interest they have excited has been further increased of late years by discoveries respecting the peculiar organizations of their stems. In 1822 Adolph Brongniart assigned to them the name of “Spenophyllites,” and in 1823 Sternberg figured some of them under the generic title of “Rotularia.”1 Sternberg's figures appeared in his “Versuch einer Geognostisch-Botanischen Darstellung der Flora der Vorwelt,” which work is now best known through the French translation of it by Comte de Bray. To the first of his specimens figured (loc. cit., tab. xxvi., figs. 4a and b), Sternberg gave the name of Rotularia pusilla, and the example so designated is very characteristic of the simpler type of the group, in which we have a somewhat branched stem, with verticils of wedge-shaped leaves at each node. A second form was figured on a later plate of the same work. It is interesting to note that Sternberg associated with these figures the observation, “Plantæ organisatione foliorum Marsileis, forma caulis Hippuri Maritimræ.” The generic name thus given by this author represents the rotate arrangements of the leaves in each verticil, as the wedge-shaped contour of each separate leaf is further indicated by Brongniart's generic term, “Sphenophyllites.” In 1820 Von Schlotheim had also included similar examples in his too comprehensive genus, “Palmacites.2”
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WILLIAMSON, W. The Genus Sphenophyllum. Nature 47, 11–13 (1892). https://doi.org/10.1038/047011c0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/047011c0