This sicula, which had originally the shape of a hollow cone, is formed of two portions or regions - an upper and smaller (apical or embryonic) portion, marked by delicate longitudinal lines, and having a fine tabular thread (the nema) proceeding from its apex; and a lower (thecal or apertural) portion, marked by transverse lines of growth and widening in the direction of the mouth, the lip or apertural margin of which forms the broad end of the sicula.
In some species young examples have been met with in which the nema ends above in a small membranous disk, which has been interpreted as an organ of attachment to the underside of floating bodies, probably sea weeds, from which the young polypary hung suspended.
There is a tendency for the branches to become reduced in number, and for the serial thecae to become directed more and more upwards towards the line of the nema.
In the family of the Diplograptidae the branches are reduced to two; these also coalesce similarly by their dorsal walls, and the polypary thus becomes biserial (diprionidian), and the line of the nema is taken by a long axial tube-like structure, the nemacaulus or virgular tube.
The Graptoloidea have also been regarded by some as benthonic organisms. A more prevalent view, however, is that the majority were pseudo-planktonic or drifting colonies, hanging from the underside of floating seaweeds; their polyparies being each .suspended by the nema in the earliest stages of growth, and, in later stages, some by the nemacaulus, while others became adherent above by means of a central disk or by parts of their dorsal walls.