page_title: Lepidodendron
section_title: Structure
hierarchical_section_title: Lepidodendron / Structure
caption_attribution_description: English: Lepidostrobus variabilis, from the coal measures of Newcastle. Specimen stored in the Sedgwick museum, Cambridge. Moistened with water before photography.
context_page_description: Lepidodendron is an extinct genus of primitive plant. They were the first large land plants, and a major part of the coal forest tropical flora.
  They were huge, over 30 metres, and the trunks were often over 1 m in diameter.
  Sometimes called 'giant club mosses', they are actually closer to the quillworts Isoetes than to clubmosses.
context_section_description: Lepidodendron had tall, thick trunks that rarely branched and were topped with a crown of bifurcating branches bearing clusters of leaves. These leaves were long and narrow, similar to large blades of grass, and were spirally-arranged.   
  The closely packed diamond-shaped leaf scars left on the trunk and stems as the plant grew provide some of the most interesting and common fossils in Carboniferous shales and accompanying coal deposits. These fossils look much like tire tracks or alligator skin. 
  The scars, or leaf cushions, were composed of green photosynthetic tissue, evidenced by the cuticle covering and being dotted with stomata, microscopic pores through which carbon dioxide from the air diffuses into plants. Likewise, the trunks of Lepidodendron would have been green, unlike modern trees which have scaly, non-photosynthetic brown or gray bark.
  Lepidodendron has been likened to a giant herb. The trunks produced very little, if any, wood. Most structural support came from a thick, bark-like region. This region remained around the trunk as a rigid layer that did not flake off like that of most modern trees. As the tree grew, the leaf cushions expanded to accommodate the increasing width of the trunk.
  The branches of this plant ended in cone-like structures. Lepidodendron did not produce seeds like many modern plants. Instead, it reproduced by means of spores.
caption: The strobilus (sporangia-bearing part) of Lepidodendron
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