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Archaeopteris is an extinct genus of tree-like progymnosperms with fern-like fronds, known only from fossils dating to the Late Devonian and Early Carboniferous. It is not grown today, so care advice does not apply.
Archaeopteris is an extinct genus of progymnosperm tree with fern-like leaves. A useful index fossil, this tree is found in strata dating from the Upper Devonian to Lower Carboniferous (382 to 323 million years ago), the oldest fossils being 385 million years old, and had global distribution.
Until the 2007 discovery of Wattieza, many scientists considered Archaeopteris to be the earliest known tree. Bearing buds, reinforced branch joints, and branched trunks similar to today's woody plants, it is more reminiscent of modern seed-bearing trees than other spore-bearing taxa. It combines characteristics of woody trees and herbaceous ferns, and belongs to the progymnosperms, a group of extinct plants more closely related to seed plants than to ferns, but unlike seed plants, reproducing using spores like ferns.
Evidence indicates that Archaeopteris preferred wet soils, growing close to river systems and in floodplain woodlands. It would have formed a significant part of the canopy vegetation of early forests. Speaking of the first appearance of Archaeopteris on the world-scene, Stephen Scheckler, a professor of biology and geological sciences at Virginia Polytechnic Institute, says, "When [Archaeopteris] appears, it very quickly became the dominant tree all over the Earth. On all of the land areas that were habitable, they all had this tree". One species, Archaeopteris notosaria, has even been reported from within what was then the Antarctic Circle: leaves and fertile structures were identified from the Waterloo Farm lagerstätte in what is now South Africa.
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Archaeopteris by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts and the care summary drawn from them are shared under the same licence.
The care summary was written by AI (Claude, Anthropic) from the sources on this page, with general growing knowledge where they are silent. Check before relying on it.
