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In some coal-districts fossil fruits, named cardiocarpum and trigonocarpum, have been found in great quantities, and these have now been decided by botanists to be the fruits of certain conifers, allied, not to those which bear hard cones, but to those which bear solitary fleshy fruits. Sir Charles Lyell referred them to a Chinese genus of the yew tribe called salisburia.
This peculiar type of pith is observed in living plants of very different families, such as the common Walnut and the White Jasmine, in which the pith becomes so reduced as simply to form a thin lining of the medullary cavity, across which transverse plates of pith extend horizontally, so as to divide the cylindrical hollow into discoid interspaces. Trigonocarpum ovatum, Lindley and Hutton.
Trigonocarpum olivaeforme, Lindley, with its fleshy envelope. Hooker, be referred, like the Sternbergia, to the Coniferae. Its geological importance is great, for so abundant is it in the coal-measures, that in certain localities the fruit of some species may be procured by the bushel; nor is there any part of the formation where they do not occur, except the under-clays and limestone.
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