Reconstruction of the sporophyte of Aglaophyton, illustrating bifurcating axes with terminal sporangia, and rhizoids. Insets show a cross-section of a sporangium and the probable spores.
Scientific classification
Kingdom:
Plantae
Clade:
Polysporangiophytes
Genus:
†Aglaophyton D.S.Edwards 1986[1]
Species
†A. major (Kidston & Lang 1920) Edwards 1986[1]
Synonyms
Lyonophyton Remy & Remy 1980
Rhynia major Kidston & Lang 1920
Lyonophyton rhyniensis Remy & Remy 1980
Aglaophyton major (or more correctly Aglaophyton majus[2]) was the sporophyte generation of a diplohaplontic, pre-vascular, axial, free-sporing land plant of the Lower Devonian (Pragian stage, around 410 million years ago). It had anatomical features intermediate between those of the bryophytes and vascular plants or tracheophytes.
A. major was first described by Kidston and Lang in 1920 as the new species Rhynia major.[3] The species is known only from the Rhynie chert in Aberdeenshire, Scotland, where it grew in the vicinity of a silica-rich hot spring, together with a number of associated vascular plants such as a smaller species Rhynia gwynne-vaughanii which may be interpreted as a representative of the ancestors of modern vascular plants and Asteroxylon mackei, which was an ancestor of modern clubmosses (Lycopsida).
^ abCite error: The named reference Edwards_1986 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
^Strictly the name should have been Aglaophyton majus, as -phyton is neuter and the neuter of Latin comparative adjectives ends in -us. Since February 2018, authors writing on the Rhynie chert have begun using the more correct form. See Wellman, Charles H. (2018), "Palaeoecology and palaeophytogeography of the Rhynie chert plants: Further evidence from integrated analysis of in situ and dispersed spores", Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 373 (1739): 20160491, doi:10.1098/rstb.2016.0491, PMC 5745327, PMID 29254956 and other papers in the same issue of that journal.
^Cite error: The named reference KidstonLang1920 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
Aglaophyton major (or more correctly Aglaophyton majus) was the sporophyte generation of a diplohaplontic, pre-vascular, axial, free-sporing land plant...
modern clubmosses (Lycopsida), and with pre-vascular plants such as Aglaophyton major, which is interpreted as basal to true vascular plants. Rhynia...
because of inadequate anatomical preservation", but exclude plants like Aglaophyton and Horneophyton which definitely do not possess tracheids.: 214–215 ...
group of all other polysporangiophytes. One other former rhyniophyte, Aglaophyton, is also placed outside the tracheophyte clade, as it did not possess...
detail that arbuscular mycorrhizae have been observed in the stems of Aglaophyton major, giving a lower bound for how late mycorrhizal symbiosis may have...
has also enabled paleobotanists to firmly deduce that plants such as Aglaophyton were not aquatic, as once believed. Further, as plants are preserved...
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