7.5 " Petrified Horsetail (Calamites?) From Madagascar - Rare!

This is an unusual petrified wood from Madagascar, a slab of fossilized Horsetail (Calamites?). It has a brick red coloration, is 6" wise and polished to a glossy finish on both sides. It comes with an acrylic display stand.

Calamites is a genus of extinct arborescent (tree-like) horsetails to which the modern horsetails are closely related. Unlike their modern cousins, these plants were medium-sized trees, growing to heights of more than 30 meters (100 feet).

The trunks of Calamites had a distinctive segmented, bamboo-like appearance and vertical ribbing. The branches, leaves and cones were all borne in whorls. The leaves were needle-shaped, with up to 25 per whorl. The stems of modern horsetails are typically hollow or contain numerous elongated air-filled sacs. Calamites was similar in that its trunk and stems were hollow, like wooden tubes. When these trunks buckled and broke, they could fill with sediment. This is the reason pith casts of the inside of Calamites stems are so common as fossils.