Fossil plants, Vol. 1 : $b [A text-book] for students of botany and geologySeward, A. C. (Albert Charles)
Science
Fossil plants, Vol. 1 : $b [A text-book] for students of botany and geology
Seward, A. C. (Albert Charles)
Paleobotany
Some of the Calamite casts, especially those referred to the subgenus
_Calamitina_, are occasionally found with leaves attached to the nodes.
In some stems the leaves are arranged in a close verticil, and each
leaf has a narrow linear form and is traversed by a single median vein.
Figures of Calamite stems with verticils of long and narrow leaves
may be found in Lindley and Hutton[636], and in the writings of many
other authors[637]. In the specimen shown in fig. 85 the leaves are
preserved apart from the stem, but from their close association with
a Calamite cast, and from the proofs afforded by other specimens, it
is quite certain they formed part of a whorl of leaves attached to the
node of a true Calamite, and a stem having that particular type known
as _Calamitina_[638] (figs. 99, 100). It is probable that in some
Calamites, and especially in younger shoots, the leaves had the form of
narrow sheaths split up into linear segments. This question has already
been referred to in dealing with certain Palaeozoic fossils referred to
_Equisetites_[639].
[Illustration: FIG. 85. Linear leaves of a Calamite (_Calamitina_).
After Weiss, slightly reduced.]
A few years ago the late Thomas Hick[640], of Manchester, described
the structure of some leaves which he believed to be those of a
Calamite. He found them attached to a slender axis which possessed the
characteristics of a young Calamite branch. There can be little doubt
that his specimens are true Calamite leaves. The sketches of fig. 86
have been made from the sections originally described by Hick. Fig.
86, 1 shows a leaf in transverse section; on the outside there is a
well-defined epidermal layer with a limiting cuticle. Internal to
this we have radially elongated parenchymatous cells forming a loose
or spongy tissue, the cells being often separated by fairly large
spaces (fig. 86, 5), especially in the region of the blunt lateral
wings of the leaf. Some of these cells contain a single dark dot, which
in all probability is the mineralised nucleus. These pallisade-like
cells probably contained chlorophyll and constituted the assimilating
tissue of the leaf. In the centre there is a circular strand of cells
limited by a layer of larger cells with black contents, enclosing an
inner group of small-celled parenchyma and traversed by a few spiral
or scalariform tracheids constituting the single median vein. It is
hardly possible to recognise any phloem elements in the small vascular
bundle; there appear to be a few narrow tracheids surrounded by larger
parenchymatous elements (fig. 86, 2). At one point in the epidermis
of fig. 86, 1, there appears to be a stoma, but the details are not
very clearly shown (fig. 86, 4); the two cells, _s_, _s_, bordering the
small aperture are probably guard-cells.
[Illustration: FIG. 86. A leaf of _Calamites_.
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