394 STUDIES IN FOSSIL BOTANY 



seed-bearing organ formed part of a leaf. Evidence 

 from closely allied species leaves no doubt that the 

 seeds were borne on compound fronds or pinnae, only 

 differing from the sterile foliage in the suppression of 

 the laminae of the leaflets, or rather, perhaps, their 

 modification to form the cupules. 



Calymmatotheca Stangeri, a fructification of Lower 

 Carboniferous age, discovered by Stur in 1877, 1 consists 

 of stellate, usually six-rayed bodies, borne on a naked 

 branched rachis. A reinvestigation of the specimens 

 has confirmed Stur's attribution of the fructification to 

 a Sphenopteris closely similar to S. Hbninghausi (the 

 foliage of Lyginodendron oldhamiuwi), and also his 

 interpretation of the stellate bodies as foliaceous indusia, 

 and not groups of sporangia. There is little doubt that 

 these organs 2 are of the same nature as the cupules of 

 our Lyginodendron, but in Stur's, specimens the seeds 



had been shed, perhaps 

 prematurely. 



Mr. Arber has described 

 a seed, Lagenostoma Sinclair!, 

 Kidston, of Lower Coal- 

 measure age, which agrees 

 closely in external charac- 

 ters with L. Lomaxi, and, 

 „ , . „....„. like the latter, is invested in a 



frlG. 150. — Lagenostoma. Sinclain. Portion ' 



of branched rachis, bearing cupulate lobed CUpule (FigS. I 50 and 

 seeds. Nat. size. After Arber. 



151). The cupulate seeds 

 were borne on the terminations of the finer branches of 

 a highly compound frond, with reduced lamina, in all 



1 Stur, " Die Culmflora der Ostrauer u. Waldenburger Schichten," 

 Abhandl. d. k. k. geol. Reichsanstalt zu Wien, vol. viii. Part ii. 



2 Indicated in the restoration of iSyginodendron in Fig. 1, Frontispiece. 



