Bellarinea richardsii Nagalingum Drinnan and McLoughlin, 2002

Pole, Mike, 2019, Middle-Late Jurassic plant assemblages of the Catlins coast, New Zealand, Palaeontologia Electronica (a 51) 23 (3), pp. 1-48 : 27-30

Bellarinea richardsii Nagalingum Drinnan and McLoughlin, 2002

Figure 18

1886? Taxites manawao Hector , fig. 30A (2).

1917 roots, Arber, pl. 10, fig. 4.

1934 Elatocladus plana (Feistmantel) ; Edwards, p.

103, pl. 5, fig. 3.

2002 Bellarinea richardsii Nagalingum Drinnan and

McLoughlin, fig. 40E in McLoughlin et al.

(2002).

Material. Curio Bay: LX1239, Little Beach-01: LX0675, LX0676, LX1052, LX1130, LX1156, LX1271, LX1275.

Description. Detached shoots, c. 90 mm long, axis c. 1 mm diameter, with spirally inserted leaves, probably distichously flattened. Leaves linear, straight or slightly inwardly curved, very elongate, up to 34 mm long, 0.7–1.0 mm wide, well-spaced, typically 3–6 mm apart, not narrowed at the base, probably decurrent basally, perhaps slightly expanded apically.

Remarks. This material is similar to one of the specimens illustrated by McLoughlin et al. (2002, fig. 40E) and Nagalingum et al. (2005, fig. 2B) as Bellarinea richardsii . Both show the well-spaced, very elongate, inflexed leaves, attached to the axis with no sign of narrowing to a false petiole, and in some cases, an apical margin at the base that curves apically. This is a distinctive morphology and may indicate the material is conspecific. Florin’s (1952) original concept of Bellarinea required epidermal information for identification. However, Nagalingum et al. (2005) emended the generic diagnosis to include the shoots being unbranched and, therefore, probably annually deciduous. This contrasted with typical Elatocladus that have branched shoots and rhythmic growth. This suggests it would be useful to recognise an additional conifer form genus to those of Harris (1969, 1979) with Elatocladus emended to cover branched shoots only (with the down-side that fragments would be harder to deal with). Despite the lack of epidermal information in the Catlins material, Bellarinea richardsii is used here to emphasise the morphological similarity with the Victorian material.

Figures

FIGURE 18. Bellarinea richardsii, all Little Bay-01. 1. LX0676; 2. LX0675; 3. LX1275; 4. LX1130. All scale bars equal 10 mm.