Externally, the trunks of Sigillaria present strong longitudinal ridges, with vertical alternating rows of oval leaf-scars indicating the points where the leaves were originally
Fig. 111.—Fragment of the external surface of Sigillaria Grœseri, showing the ribs and leaf-scars. The left-hand figure represents a small portion enlarged. Carboniferous, Europe. attached. The trunk was furnished with a large central pith, a thick outer bark, and an intermediate woody zone,—composed, according to Dawson, partly of the disc-bearing fibres so characteristic of Conifers; but, according to Carruthers, entirely made up of the "scalariform" vessels characteristic of Cryptogams. The size of the pith was very great, and the bark seems to have been the most durable portion of the trunk. Thus we have evidence that in many cases the stumps and "stools" of Sigillariœ, standing upright in the old Carboniferous swamps, were completely hollowed out by internal decay, till nothing but an exterior shell of bark was left. Often these hollow stumps became ultimately filled up with sediment, sometimes enclosing the remains of galley-worms, land-snails, or Amphibians, which formerly found in the cavity of the trunk a congenial home; and from the sandstone or shale now filling such trunks some of the most interesting fossils of the Coal-period have been obtained. There is little certainty as to either the leaves or fruits of Sigillaria, and there is equally little certainty as to the true botanical position of these plants. By Principal Dawson they are regarded as being probably flowering plants allied to the existing "false palms" or "Cycads," but the high authority of Mr Carruthers is to be quoted in support of the belief that they are Cryptogamic, and most nearly allied to the Club-mosses.
Leaving the botanical position of Sigillaria thus undecided, we find that it is now almost universally conceded that the fossils originally described under the name of Stigmaria are the roots of Sigillaria, the actual connection between the two having been in numerous instances demonstrated in an unmistakable manner. The Stigmariœ (fig. 112) ordinarily present themselves in the form of long, compressed or rounded
Fig. 112.—Stigmaria ficoides. Quarter natural size. Carboniferous. fragments, the external surface of which is covered with rounded pits or shallow tubercles, each of which has a little pit or depression in its centre. From each of these pits there proceeds, in perfect examples, a long cylindrical rootlet; but in many cases these have altogether disappeared. In their internal structure, Stigmaria exhibits a central pith surrounded by a sheath of scalariform vessels, the whole enclosed in a cellular envelope. The Stigmariœ are generally found ramifying in the "under-clay," which forms the floor of a bed of coal, and which represents the ancient soil upon which the Sigillariœ grew.
The Lepidodendroids and Sigillaroids, though the first were certainly, and the second possibly, Cryptogamic or flowerless plants, must have constituted the main mass of the forests of the Coal period; but we are not without evidence of the existence at the same time of genuine "trees," in the technical sense of this term—namely, flowering plants with large woody stems. So far as is certainly known, all the true trees of the Carboniferous formation were Conifers, allied to the existing Pines and Firs. They are recognised by the great size and concentric woody rings of their prostrate, rarely erect trunks, and by the presence of disc-bearing fibres in their wood, as demonstrated by the microscope; and the principal genera which have been recognised are Dadoxylon, Palœoxylon, Araucarioxylon, and Pinites. Their fruit is not known with absolute certainty, unless it be represented, as often conjectured, by Trigonocarpon (fig. 113). The fruits known under this name are nut-like, often of
Fig. 113.—Trigonocarpon ovatum. Coal-measures, Britain. (After Liudley and Hutton.) considerable size, and commonly three- or six-angled. They probably originally possessed a fleshy envelope; and if truly referable to the Conifers, they would indicate that these ancient evergreens produced berries instead of cones, and thus resembled the modern Yews rather than Pines. It seems, further, that the great group of the Cycads, which are nearly allied to the Conifers, and which attained such a striking prominence in the Secondary period, probably commenced its existence during the Coal period; but these anticipatory forms are comparatively few in number, and for the most part of somewhat dubious affinities.