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''Aglaophyton major'' was the sporophyte generation of a diplohaplontic, pre-vascular, axial, free-sporing land plant of the Lower Devonian (Pragian stage, around ). 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''.〔 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). ==Description== The stems of ''Aglaophyton'' were round in cross-section, smooth, unornamented, and up to about 6mm in diameter. Kidston and Lang〔 interpreted the plant as growing upright, to about 50 cm in height, but Edwards〔 has re-interpreted it as having prostrate habit, with shorter aerial axes of about 15 cm height. The axes branched dichotomously, the aerial axes branching at a comparatively wide angle of up to 90°, and were terminated with elliptical, thick-walled sporangia, which when mature, opened by spiral slits, so that the sporangia appear to be spiral in form. Sporangia contained many identical spores (isospores) bearing trilete marks. The spores may therefore be interpreted as meiospores, the product of meiotic divisions, and thus the plants described by Edwards and by Kidston and Lang were diploid, sporophytes. The plant was originally interpreted as a tracheophyte, because the stem has a simple central vascular cylinder or protostele,〔 but more recent interpretations in the light of additional data indicated that ''Rhynia major'' had water-conducting tissue lacking the secondary thickening bars seen in the xylem of ''Rhynia gwynne-vaughanii'', more like the water-conducting system (hydrome) of moss sporophytes. Edwards〔 reinterpreted the species as non-vascular plant and renamed it ''Aglaophyton major''. ''Aglaophyton'' is among the first plants known to have had a mycorrhizal relationship with fungi, which formed arbuscules in a well-defined zone in the cortex of its stems. ''Aglaophyton'' lacked roots, and like other rootless land plants of the Silurian and early Devonian may have relied on mycorrhizal fungi for acquisition of water and nutrients from the soil. The male gametophyte of the species has been formally described,〔Remy, W & Remy, R (1980) ''Lyonophyton rhyniensis'' n.gen. et nov. spec., ein Gametophyt aus dem Chert von Rhynie (Unterdevon, Schottland). Argumenta Palaeobotanica, 6, 37-72〕 which was assigned to a new form taxon ''Lyonophyton rhyniensis'', but is now properly referred to as an ''Aglaophyton'' gametophyte. The Rhynie chert bears many examples of male and female gametophytes, which are loosely similar in their construction to the sporophyte phase, down to bearing rhizoids. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Aglaophyton」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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