Silurian plants

Cooksonia is an extinct group of primitive land plants, treated as a genus, although probably not monophyletic. The earliest Cooksonia date from the middle of the Silurian (the Wenlock epoch); the group continued to be an important component of the flora until the end of the Early Devonian, a total time span of . While Cooksonia fossils are distributed globally, most type specimens come from Britain, where they were first discovered in 1937. Cooksonia includes the oldest known plant to have a stem with vascular tissue and is thus a transitional form between the primitive non-vascular bryophyte

Asteroxylon ("star-shaped wood") is an extinct genus of vascular plants of the Division Lycopodiophyta known from anatomically preserved specimens described from the famous Early Devonian Rhynie chert and Windyfield chert in Aberdeenshire, Scotland. Asteroxylon is considered a basal member of the Lycopsida.

The Nematophyta or nematophytes were a paraphyletic group of land organisms, probably including some plants as well as algae known only from the fossil record, from the Silurian period until the early Devonian Rhynie chert. The type genus Nematothallus, which typifies the group, was first described by Lang in 1937, who envisioned it being a thallose plant with tubular features and sporophytes, covered by a cuticle which preserved impressions of the underlying cells. He had found abundant disaggregated remains of all three features, none of which were connected to another, leaving his reconstru

The zosterophylls are a group of extinct land plants that first appeared in the Silurian period. The taxon was first established by Banks in 1968 as the subdivision Zosterophyllophytina; they have since also been treated as the division Zosterophyllophyta or Zosterophyta and the class or plesion Zosterophyllopsida or Zosteropsida. They were among the first vascular plants in the fossil record, and had a world-wide distribution. They were probably stem-group lycophytes, forming a sister group to the ancestors of the living lycophytes. By the late Silurian (late Ludlovian, about ) a diverse asse

thumb|Horneophyton corms found in the Rhynie chert; scale bar is 1 cm. The Horneophytopsida, informally called horneophytes, are a class of extinct plants which consisted of branched stems without leaves, true roots or vascular tissue, found from the Late Silurian to the Early Devonian (around ). They are the simplest known polysporangiophytes, i.e. plants with sporophytes bearing many spore-forming organs (sporangia) on branched stems. They were formerly classified among the rhyniophytes, but it was later found that some of the original members of the group had simple vascular tissue and

Drepanophycales is an order of extinct lycophyte plants of Late Silurian to Late Devonian age (around ), found in North America, China, Russia, Europe, and Australia. Sometimes known as the Asteroxylales or Baragwanathiales.

Baragwanathia is a genus of extinct lycopsid plants of Late Silurian to Early Devonian age (), fossils of which have been found in Australia, Canada, China and Czechia. The name derives from William Baragwanath who discovered the first specimens of the type species, Baragwanathia longifolia, at Thomson River (Victoria, Australia).

Tortilicaulis is a moss-like plant known from fossils recovered from southern Britain, spanning the Silurian-Devonian boundary (around ). Originally recovered from the Downtonian of the Welsh borderlands, Tortilicaulis has since been recovered in the famous Ludlow Lane locality.

Zosterophyllum was a genus of Silurian-Devonian vascular land plants with naked branching axes on which usually kidney-shaped sporangia were arranged in lateral positions. It is the type genus for the group known as zosterophylls, thought to be part of the lineage from which modern lycophytes evolved. More than 20 species have been described.

The Sawdoniales are an order or plesion of extinct zosterophylls. The zosterophylls were among the first vascular plants in the fossil record, and share an ancestor with the living lycophytes. The group has been divided up in various ways. In their major cladistic study of early land plants, Kenrick and Crane placed most of the zosterophylls in the Sawdoniales (which they treated as a plesion).