I recently ran into an interesting post on the blog “In Defense of Plants”.  It’s called “The Rise and Fall of the Scale Trees”.  If you collect or are familiar with Mazon Creek fossils, you probably have heard of Lepidodendron, Stigmaria, Psaronius, Cyperites. etc.  You might even have a few of these fossils.  Some of these are the species name for a plant part or even the name that denotes the whole specimen.  Fossil plants are usually fragmentary and separate parts were given different names.  As more fossils are found, associated parts help paleobotanists assemble whole plants.  This post does a great job explaining what the scale trees were, how they lived, and even how they reproduced.

If I had a time machine, the first place I would visit would be the Carboniferous. Spanning from 358.9 to 298.9 million years ago, this was a strange time in Earth’s history. The continents were jumbled together into two great landmasses – Laurasia to the north and Gondwana to the south and the equatorial regions were dominated by humid, tropical swamps. To explore these swamps would be to explore one of the most alien landscapes this world has ever known.

The Carboniferous was the heyday for early land plants. Giant lycopods, ferns, and horsetails formed the backbone of terrestrial ecosystems. By far the most abundant plants during these times were a group of giant, tree-like lycopsids known as the scale trees. Scale trees collectively make up the extinct genus Lepidodendron and despite constantly being compared to modern day club mosses (Lycopodiopsida), experts believe they were more closely related to the quillworts (Isoetopsida).