Plants

121Paleozoic

Leafless stems only centimeters tall held spore capsules at their tips, marking an early step inland.

122Paleozoic

Naked upright axes rose from creeping rhizomes, preserved cell by cell by silica-rich hot springs.

123Paleozoic

It grew true wood and a tree crown but still reproduced by spores, helping create Earth's first broad forests.

124Paleozoic

A straight trunk patterned with diamond leaf scars forked only high above the Carboniferous mire.

125Paleozoic

Casts of jointed stems record large horsetail relatives; Calamites suckowii does not automatically name a plant with all organs known.

126Paleozoic

Woody stems carried immense fernlike fronds, yet seeds grew among the foliage of this vanished seed fern.

127Paleozoic

Tongue-shaped leaves across the southern continents became important evidence that Gondwana was once united.

128Mesozoic

Flower-like reproductive organs nestled among cycad-like leaves, but this bennettitalean was not a flowering plant.

129Mesozoic

Long leaves divided into broad segments formed part of the cycadophyte layer beneath Jurassic trees.

130Mesozoic

What looked like one trunk was a false stem woven from many small axes and adventitious roots.

131Mesozoic

Elongated aquatic stems bore petal-less reproductive structures important to debates about early flowering plants.

132Mesozoic

Curved cupules containing ovules hung beneath compound leaves in this puzzling seed plant.

133Recently extinct

It was not a true olive; the last wild tree died in 1994 and its last cultivated descendant in 2003.

134Recently extinct

Demand for fragrant wood reduced this island tree to a final individual recorded in 1908.

135Recently extinct

Pink-purple pea flowers once carried this monotypic island plant into European glasshouses.

136Recently extinct

This violet occupied one small patch of pale limestone before quarrying removed its habitat.

141Paleozoic

Leafless axes rose in stands from creeping stems; conducting cells were present, but true vascular tissue was not.

142Paleozoic

Short axes carried forked sporangia above corm-like bases that could resprout on a repeatedly flooded hot-spring surface.

143Paleozoic

Veinless leaf-like flaps covered its axes, while star-shaped xylem supplied shoots that rose nearly half a meter.

144Paleozoic

Branches more than a meter long carried dense narrow microphylls, far more elaborate than most naked-stemmed plants of its age.

145Paleozoic

Naked axes forked repeatedly, their fertile tips curling inward and carrying paired elongated sporangia.

146Paleozoic

Two rows of kidney-shaped sporangia lined curved branch tips like the teeth of an unfinished botanical zipper.

147Paleozoic

Vertical rows of leaf scars stamped the tall trunk, beneath a crown of sparse branches and grasslike microphylls.

148Paleozoic

Rounded pinnules carried fanlike veins and looked fernlike, yet immense seeds grew among the fronds.

149Paleozoic

Clusters of long strap-shaped leaves crowned woody trees from an extinct gymnosperm lineage near early conifers.

150Paleozoic

Six wedge-shaped leaves encircled each node of a slender stem that trailed across the ground or climbed larger trees.

151Mesozoic

Several separate woody columns occupied one stem beneath clusters of long leaves and unusual male and female organs.

152Mesozoic

A stout barrel-shaped trunk held a pinnate crown and many flower-like bisexual reproductive structures among old leaf bases.

153Mesozoic

Finely pinnate fronds carpeted Jurassic understories, each toothed leaflet crossed by repeatedly branching veins.

154Cenozoic

Fan-shaped leaves and paired ovules continued the ginkgo body plan in a species that did not survive to the present.

155Mesozoic

Tall conifers bore nearly spherical cones whose internal scales and ovules were silicified by volcanic landscapes.

156Recently extinct

Silvery hairy leaves and small pale flowers once covered dry slopes; the last reliable collection was made in 1771.

157Recently extinct

Purple pea flowers grew on one limestone river island, with the final herbarium collection made in 1881.

158Recently extinct

The only scientifically recorded tree bore curved yellow-green tubular flowers probably adapted to Hawaiian honeycreepers.

159Recently extinct

Narrow leaves and hibiscus-like red flowers were confined to southeastern Oʻahu and vanished within decades of discovery.

160Recently extinct

Red-striped yellow-green tubular flowers opened among fleshy paired leaves; the last reliable sighting was in 1954.

349Mesozoic

Four net-veined leaflets belonged to a seed fern rather than a true fern.

350Mesozoic

Silica replaced fallen trunks to create today's multicolored petrified forest.

419Paleozoic

Eight-meter leafless crowns formed one of the earliest known forests.

420Mesozoic

Columnar lycophytes formed pioneer stands after the end-Permian catastrophe.

421Mesozoic

Paired forked fronds became an emblem of Triassic southern vegetation.

422Paleozoic

Broad tongue-shaped leaves lacked the strong midrib of later glossopterids.

423Paleozoic

Firm fern-like pinnules belonged to a seed plant rather than a true fern.

424Mesozoic

Orderly lance-shaped leaves lined stems of a widespread but enigmatic plant.

479Paleozoic

A palm-like crown belonged not to a fern but to an extinct heterosporous seed-plant relative.

480Paleozoic

Hollow jointed stems let an early horsetail relative grow as a tall shrub or small tree.

481Paleozoic

Shield-shaped reproductive discs record an innovation among drought-tolerant seed ferns.

501Paleozoic

Diamond leaf cushions and a repeatedly forked crown marked a tall tree-sized lycopsid.

502Paleozoic

Narrow leaves repeatedly forked at their tips on an extinct seed-plant relative.

503Paleozoic

Needle-like leaves crowded the shoots of an early conifer-like tree.

504Mesozoic

Leaves of different lengths on one shoot record an early stage of modern conifer architecture.

505Mesozoic

Entire strap-shaped leaves with dense side veins define a form genus rather than one secure lineage.

551Mesozoic

Thick leathery pinnules and lower-surface stomata helped this seed fern withstand seasonal dryness.

552Mesozoic

Huge, nearly undivided strap leaves opened from a stout cycad-like crown.

553Mesozoic

Tough pinnate leaves crowned cycad-like trunks around compact flower-like reproductive organs.