Sphenopsida
/sfɛˈnɒpsɪdə
/plural noun Botany
A class of pteridophyte plants that comprises the horsetails and their extinct relatives.In the past, this group was thought to be ancestral to the Sphenopsida based on their overall structure and organization, but more recent studies show their internal anatomy was more like that of the ferns....
- By the early Mesozoic, these had apparently become extinct, with the rather scanty fossil record of Sphenopsida consisting by then mainly of casts and impressions of stems resembling those of modern Equisetum.
- In order to build up data infrastructure on the horology of Croatian vascular flora, the present data on the distribution of taxa from the class Sphenopsida were collected from literature and herbarium sources.
Derivatives
sphenopsid
- The remaining morphospecies are organs of cycads, ginkgophytes, lycopods, sphenopsids, and bryophytes.
- Both ferns and sphenopsids have members in the living flora, although their modern diversities are vastly different.
- The genus Hyenia was a rhizomatous plant, much like modern ferns and sphenopsids.
Origin
Modern Latin (plural), from Greek sphēn 'wedge' + opsis 'appearance'.