Australia: The Land Where Time Began

A biography of the Australian continent 

Devonian Flora

During the Devonian, when the first terrestrial vertebrates were beginning to walk on land in Australia, the vegetation was dominated by lycopods, primitive vascular plants, exemplified by some elements of the Baragwanathia flora that first appears in Australian rocks in the Late Silurian. Most land plants of the time were small, but already had some adaptations to life out of water, such as leaves, roots, and a vascular system that carried water and nutrients to all parts of the plant.

During the Middle to Late Devonian, some of the plants began to developed secondary wood, the addition of this tissue allowing them to grow much larger, supported by the wood. By the Middle Devonian, forests had become a major land cover - the forests were composed of giant lycopods (club mosses), sphenopsids and horsetails.

Sources & Further reading

1. Mary E. White, The Greening of Gondwana, the 400 Million Year story of Australian Plants, Reed, 1994