DEVONIAN LAND PLANT PROTOSALVINIA

Gray, Jane&Boucot, ArthurJ. 197901 15: The Devonian land plant Protosalvinia. Lethaia. Vol. 12, pp. 57–63. Oslo. ISSN 0024–1164. Protosalvinia (=Foerstia) shows a number of morphological features which suggest that it was a land plant, possibly an emergent aquatic. Certain kinds of biochemical data, as presently interpreted, also support the morphological evidence. The weight of evidence supports neither a fucoid nor even an algal attribution for this enigmatic plant. Protosalvinia should be treated as the representative of a separate group of land plants, as previously advocated. Tracheid‐like tubes with internal spiral thickenings appear on the basis of direct comparison to be morphologically identical to those of nematophytalean origin. They may have functioned in a capacity similar to the tracheids of vascular plants. The Nematophytales are non‐marine plants of uncertain taxonomic position. Copyright © 1979, Wiley Blackwell. All rights reserved