United States or Maldives ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Now this little Selaginella is of all living plants the one most like some of the gigantic trees of the coal-forests. These trees are called by botanists Lepidodendrons, or scaly trees; there are numbers of them in all coal-mines, and one trunk has been found 49 feet long. Their branches were divided in a curious forked manner and bore cones at the ends.
These great trees, the Lepidodendrons, the Sigillarias, and the Calamites, together with large tree-ferns, are the chief plants that we know of in the coal-forests.
Then a new forest would spring up, the ferns, Calamites, Lepidodendrons, and Sigillarias would gradually form another jungle, and many hundred of feet above the buried coal-bed b, a second bed of peat and vegetable matter would begin to accumulate to form the coal-bed a.
I have heard it said that, deep down in coal mines, certain of the workers have seen wondrous sights; that when they have been alone in a drift, they have heard the blowing of the wind and the rustling of leaves, and suddenly found themselves penned in on all sides by the naked trunks of enormous primitive trees, lepidodendrons, sigillarias, ferns, and other plants, that have shone out with phosphorescent grandeur amid the inky blackness of the subterranean ether.
Two families of lycopods deserve special mention, the Lepidodendrons and the Sigillaria. The LEPIDODENDRON, or "scale tree," was a gigantic club moss fifty and seventy-five feet high, spreading toward the top into stout branches, at whose ends were borne cone-shaped spore cases.
Word Of The Day