ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2016
Belowground rhizomes in paleosols: The hidden half of an Early Devonian vascular plant.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 12 papers.
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12 citing papers in PubMed, 87 citations in OpenAlex.
- On the origin of euphyllophyte roots: hypotheses from an Early Devonian Psilophyton.Annals of botany · 2026Article
- Comparative Analysis of Diversification Rates in Clonal and Non-Clonal Flowering Plants.Ecology letters · 2026Article
- The genetic and developmental enigma of rhizomes: crucial traits with limited understanding.TAG. Theoretical and applied genetics. Theoretische und angewandte Genetik · 2026Review
- The smallestProceedings. Biological sciences · 2025Article
- The role of fossils for reconstructing the evolution of plant development.Development (Cambridge, England) · 2024Article
- Mercury isotopes show vascular plants had colonized land extensively by the early Silurian.Science advances · 2023Article
- Re-study of Guangdedendron micrum from the Late Devonian Xinhang forest.BMC ecology and evolution · 2022Article
- Morphology and Nomenclature ofPlants (Basel, Switzerland) · 2021Article
- An evidence-based 3D reconstruction ofeLife · 2021Article
- Active methanogenesis during the melting of Marinoan snowball Earth.Nature communications · 2021Article
- Hormones as go-betweens in plant microbiome assembly.The Plant journal : for cell and molecular biology · 2021Review
- An organismal concept for Sengelia radicans gen. et sp. nov. - morphology and natural history of an Early Devonian lycophyte.Annals of botany · 2017Article
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11 authors at 5 institutions in 4 countries.
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No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The colonization of terrestrial environments by rooted vascular plants had far-reaching impacts on the Earth system. However, the belowground structures of early vascular plants are rarely documented, and thus the plant-soil interactions in early terrestrial ecosystems are poorly understood. Here we report the earliest rooted paleosols (fossil soils) in Asia from Early Devonian deposits of Yunnan, China. Plant traces are extensive within the soil and occur as complex network-like structures, which are interpreted as representing long-lived, belowground rhizomes of the basal lycopsid Drepanophycus The rhizomes produced large clones and helped the plant survive frequent sediment burial in well-drained soils within a seasonal wet-dry climate zone. Rhizome networks contributed to the accumulation and pedogenesis of floodplain sediments and increased the soil stabilizing effects of early plants. Predating the appearance of trees with deep roots in the Middle Devonian, plant rhizomes have long functioned in the belowground soil ecosystem. This study presents strong, direct evidence for plant-soil interactions at an early stage of vascular plant radiation. Soil stabilization by complex rhizome systems was apparently widespread, and contributed to landscape modification at an earlier time than had been appreciated.
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