Artesia?

[Chamfer]

Found this in a coal mine tailings heap in Jefferson County, Alabama. This is obviously plant material, but I don't know what kind. This location is rich in carboniferous ferns, calamites impressions, and related stuff, but this is the first specimen I've found where the striations got around the stem instead of along it. From an hour of Googling, my best guess is Artesia.

[Strepsodus]

Hi. I think it is indeed an Artisia. Nice find.

Daniel

[abyssunder]

I agree. Looks like Artisia, the pith cast of Cordaites. Just to mention, in The Fossil Flora of Great Britain, or figures and descriptions of the vegetable remains found in a fossil state in this country - John Lindley, Wlliam Hutton, Volume III, 1837 were described similar ones as Sternbergia. Sternbergia angulosa Artis Antedil. phytol. t. 8. and Sternbergia approximata Ad. Brongn. Prodr. p. 137.

" When the integuaient of coal is broken off, these plants are sometimes found simply marked by horizontal depressed lines, which meet alternately from opposite sides anastomozing in the middle ; but in other cases the space between the lines is excavated into deep furrows, and honey-combed as it were by the formation of short perpendicular bars which connect the lines ; traces also may be found of lines running along the sides of the stem for a considerable distance. The result of this is that many stems appear as if they were composed of horizontal plates, about l-16th of an inch apart and held together by some connection in the axis of the stem : a most extraordinary appearance, to which we know of no parallel, and which we are by no means prepared to say is their real structure. "

Also here is another thread : http://www.thefossilforum.com/index.php?/topic/59930-cordaite-artisia-pith/

[paleoflor]

The reason for the name change (from Sternbergia to Artisia) was motivated by the fact that the epithet Sternbergia was in prior use for an extant plant genus in the Amaryllis family (Sternbergia Waldstein and Kitaibel, 1804). As such, I reckon this name should no longer be used or advocated for the fossil specimens.