FERNS

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FERNS MOSSES

• Seedless plants

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Seedless plants

• Seedless, dispersion by spores
• Advantages of spores
• Cheap, each one small, requires small resource
  investment
• Produced in huge numbers
• Can result in huge numbers of offspring
• Disadvantage
• Wasteful, most spores unsuccessful
• Must land on good moist soil
• Little resource to support growing gametophyte

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Seedless vascular plants

• Vascular tissues, xylem, phloem
• Allow growth to large size
• Local ferns, horsetails, club mosses not very
  large, fronds 30-40 cm
• Tree ferns (tropical) to 18 m tall w/ fronds 3 m
  long
• Prehistoric club mosses tree-sized

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Phylum Pterophyta (Ferns)

• Leafy fronds, usually compound
• Fronds grow as fiddleheads
• Sporangia in sori under fronds
• One kind of spores only
• homosporous
• Gametophyte with both antheridia archegonia
• Antheridia release sperm before archegonia mature!

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Phylum Pterophyta (Ferns)
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C-Fern Gametophytes

• 1. Observation of gametophytes,
• 2. Observation of sperm release
• Swimming sperm,
• 3. Observing attraction of sperm to female
  gametophytes.
• Save dishes, we will separate new sporophytes in
  1-2 weeks

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Phylum Sphenophyta("horsetails" or "scouring
rushes")

• Hollow, segmented stems
• Minute bristle-like gray-brown fronds
• Stems hard, gritty with crystals of silica (SiO2,
  sand, glass)

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Phylum Sphenophyta

• Sporangia at tips of stems in strobilus
• Heterosporous, two kinds of spores
• separate male female gametophytes.
• One living genus, Equisetum

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Phylum Lycophyta("club mosses" or "ground pine")

• Short stems with microphylls,
• one vein per leaf (veins dont branch)
• Sporangia at tips of stems or axils of fronds in
  strobilus
• Heterosporous, two kinds of spores
• separate male female gametophytes.

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Phylum Lycophyta
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Seedless nonvascular plants

• Lack xylem or phloem
• Limited ability to transport water, minerals,
  sugars
• Usually live in moist places
• Some can endure drying, metabolism ceases until
  they are wet again.

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Phylum Bryophyta(Mosses)

• Familiar, low green soft masses on ground,
  usually in moist places

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Phylum Bryophyta(Mosses)

• Life Cycle (very different from ferns, etc.)
• dominant GAMETOPHYTE (haploid)
• familiar form
• green, with tiny leaf-like blades,
• antheridia archegonia at top of moss
• zygote grows into SPOROPHYTE (diploid)
• stalk capsule
• Capsule dries, splits open, releases spores
• Spores grow into GAMETOPHYTE

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Moss Life Cycle