A fossil plant organ with unusual internal structure from the Late Carboniferous of New South Wales

An unusual plant fossil of unknown affinities is reported from the Late Carboniferous of New South Wales. Burdekinia multiseptata gen. et sp. nov. is known from a straplike organ, externally rather featureless, but characterised by a distinctive internal structure of regular transverse sphenopsid-like partitions which form rectangular sections. These sections are filled with a lattice-work of about six parallel rows of small chambers which resembles the internal structure formed by aerenchyma cells in the leaves of the extant marsh plants in the genus Typha.