Lepidodendron, a genus of fossil plants which occurs in Carboniferous and Upper Devonian strata. Several species are recognised, most of which attained a large size—40 or 50 feet long and more than 4 feet in diameter. They were tree-like lycopods—their living representatives being the low-growing club-mosses of our mountains. The stem tapered upwards and branched dichotomously, and was either covered with linear one-nerved leaves, or where these had fallen was marked with more or less prominent ovate or lozenge-shaped leaf-scars, arranged in a spiral manner. The fruits, which were either terminal or lateral, were elongated, cylindrical bodies, composed of a conical axis, around which a great quantity of scales were compactly imbricated. The fossils described under the name Knoria are now known to be the decorticated stems of Lepidodendron. So again the fruiting branches were formerly included under the genus
Halonia, while the cones were named Lepidostrobus. Some of the roots (Stigmaria) met with in the underclays of the coal-measures also appear to belong to Lepidodendron.