Palmacites SCHLOTHEIM ex BRONGNIART, 1822

Cleal, Christopher J. & Thomas, Barry A., 2018, Nomenclatural Status Of The Palaeobotanical “ Artificial Taxa ” Established In Brongniart’S 1822 “ Classification ” Paper, Fossil Imprint 74 (1 - 2), pp. 9-28 : 21

Palmacites SCHLOTHEIM ex BRONGNIART

Text-fig. 2c

1820 Palmacites SCHLOTHEIM , p. 393 (nom. inval.).

1822a Palmacites SCHLOTHEIM ex BRONGNIART , p. 210.

Ty p e. Palmacites lamanonis BRONGNIART , p. 238, pl. 3, fig. 1; MNHN.F.1931.1; Loc.: Miocene Series, Aix-en- Provence, France.

D i a g n o s i s. “Feuilles flabelliformes.”

D i s c u s s i o n. Schlotheim (1820) originally used this genus name for a series of fossils that he regarded as belonging to palms. Most were Palaeozoic lycopsid stems, although one unillustrated species ( Palmacites flabellatus SCHLOTHEIM, 1820 , nom. inval.) was based on Jurassic fossils. Martius (1822) also referred to two of Schlotheim’s species ( Palmacites obsolutus SCHLOTHEIM and Palmacites annulatus SCHLOTHEIM ) but again without providing a generic diagnosis.

In its validly published protologue, Brongniart (1822a) restricted the fossil-genus to flabelliform, palm-like foliage and referred to just one species that may be taken as the type, P. lamonensis (in the second, 1822b, c part of the paper he mentioned a second species, Palmacites parisiensis BRONGNIART but this post-dates the protologue). Brongniart (1828a: 120) later also included stems that he regarded as having palm affinities, and Sternberg (1825) included disseminules thought to be from palms ( Palmacites noeggerathii STERNBERG, 1825 – in fact Palaeozoic medullosalean disseminules). Nowadays, however, the name is usually used in Brongniart’s (1822a) original sense for fabelliform, palm-like leaves ( Read and Hickey 1972).