What is the difference between ferns and fern allies

The green stem-like plant is the diploid sporophyte, the dominant stage in the life cycle. In the small sporangia bright yellow that form along the upper stems, the spore mother cell forms haploid spores by meiosis.

Their gametophytes are tiny little thread-like underground plants that lack chlorophyll, and live as heterotrophs in the soil, looking and acting much like a tiny fungi. It actually contains a symbiotic fungi, the same mycorrhizae that live in the rhizomes of the adult sporophyte. Division Lycophyta - 1, sp. Their are only five living genera of lycopsids, but at one time from the distant Devonian, about mya, well into the Carboniferous, they were the dominant form of vegetation on the face of the Earth.

Now they are reduced to a shadow of their glorious past, inconspicuous little plants in the forest understory. The tropical species are small epiphytes plants that grow on other plants. Their roots grow from special underground stems called rhizomes, as do most of these primitive tracheophytes. In some species the sporophylls are mixed in with the scale-like leaves.

The sperm swim down the strobilus to the archegonia, and the zygote that forms is retained in the cone, which ripens and falls to the ground. The gametophytes are independent and free-living, They are curious creatures that look and act nothing like their sporophyte parents.

They can be either heterotrophic or autotrophic, and usually have a symbiotic fungi associated with them. Many of the lycopsids are heterosporous. Selaginella is a good example of a heterosporous plant. Division Sphenophyta - 15 sp. In waste places, disturbed areas like trails and railroad beds, and in odd corners of fields and forests you might find another small plant quietly dreaming of its former splendor, the horsetail.

Horsetails appeared in the late Devonian, and were among the dominant forest trees for hundreds of millions of years. Only one genus of Sphenophyta still exists, the genus Equisetum , and it may be the oldest living genus of plants on earth. Horsetails towered among the Carboniferous forests, reaching heights of feet. Much of the coal deposits we exploit for fuel today were formed from horsetails and other trees during the Carboniferous, toward the end of the Paleozoic.

Horsetails have true roots, stems, and leaves, though the leaves are little more than flattened stems. Their hollow, ribbed stems are jointed, kind of like a stalk of bamboo, and a whorl of leaves arises at each joint. The plants are spread vegetatively by rhizomes.

The stems feel very rough, because the epidermal tissues are impregnated with tiny grains of silica sand. This probably helps protect the plant against herbivores.

The green plant we see is the diploid sporophyte generation. The stalks can be highly branched vegetative stalks, which actually look like horse tails, or straight unbranched reproductive stalks, which are tipped with a large strobilus containing the sporangia.

The homosporous spores develop into a teeny-tiny green gametophyte, just a few mm long, that looks like the gametophyte of a fern. The gametophyte is haploid, free-living, and autotrophic. Ferns probably evolved from the psilopsids, sometime in the Devonian, relatively early on in land plant evolution.

They are very abundant and diverse, ranging in size from a single centimeter to trees 24 meters tall with 5 meter fronds. Ferns are relatively advanced plants, with true roots, stems and leaves.

The blade of the fern is called a frond, and the little individual leaflets are called pinnae. Ferns have true leaves, what botanists call macrophylls. While the leaves of more primitive plants, which are called microphylls, are simply extensions of the epidermis of the stem, the leaves of ferns and higher plants were formed as a web of tissue stretched between small terminal branches. The leaves of higher plants, as well as the modified leaves that make up the pine cone and the flower.

The life cycle of the fern is typical of other non-seed vascular plants. The leafy green plant is the sporophyte. Fertile fronds develops clusters of small sporangia on the underside of the frond.

These clusters of sporangia are called sori sing. Sori are often protected by a tiny umbrella-like cap called an indusium -ia. Ferns are mostly homosporous, though some are heterosporous. The heterosporous state is a more advanced condition, that seems to have evolved independently in several groups of plants. The haploid spores are formed by meiosis inside the sporangium. They are ejected in a miniature explosion caused by the unequal drying of the alternate thick and thin-walled cells that line the outer surface.

The top pulls slowly back until it reaches a critical point and then snaps forward at an incredible speed. At that size scale, the expulsion of fern spores is one of the most explosive events in nature. The spores germinate into tiny gametophytes. Its small size lets it rely entirely on diffusion. Its tiny rhizoids are associated with mycorrhizal fungi.

The little prothallus is green, and photosynthetic, and bears either antheridia and archegonia, or sometimes both together, on its upper surface lab slides have both on same prothallus. The archegonia are always found at the arch of the heart, and the antheridia are tucked away among the tiny rhizoids at the other end. The sperm swims to the egg to fuse into a diploid zygote.

The new sporophyte grows directly out of the top of the gametophyte. When it first begins to uncurl, the frond looks like the scrolled neck of a violin or fiddle, and this stage of development is called a fiddlehead. Examine the living lycopsids on display. Why are they called club mosses? Notice that quillworts and Selaginella are very different in appearance from the club mosses.

Examine slides of Selaginella's strobilus. Identify megaspores and microspores. Examine the living horsetails on display. Notice the prominent strobili of the reproductive stalks, and the bushy growth form of the vegetative stalks if available. Examine the living whisk ferns on display. Psilopsids have a simple dichotomous branching pattern. You may see tiny yellow sporangia on the branches.

Whisk ferns lack strobili. These primitive plants are closely related to ferns. Examine the living ferns on display. Can you see any fiddleheads? Look for the rhizomes. Rhizomes are modified horizontal stems bearing roots, that run along or just underneath the ground, and spread ferns and fern allies around. Examine the living fern prothallus on display under a dissecting microscope. Note its characteristic heart shape.

In most temperate-zone species of ferns, the rhizome is subterranean and has true roots attached to it. Fronds are generally connected to the rhizome by a stalk, known technically as the stipe. The structures of the frond, rhizome, and stipe are important characteristics for species identification.

The sizes of ferns and their fronds vary considerably among the different species. Tree ferns of the Cyatheaceae family are the largest ferns. They are tropical plants which can grow 60 ft 18 m or more in height and have fronds 15 ft 5 m or more in length.

In contrast, species in the genus Azolla , a group of free-floating aquatic ferns, have very simple fronds which are less than 0. The fern frond develops from a leaf bud referred to as a crozier. Ferns and ferns allies are pteridophytes that represent the vascular tissue plants, whereas the bryophytes are embryophytes that represent as the non-vascular tissue plants.

One may also ask, what are characteristics of ferns? Instead of producing seeds from flowers, ferns produce spores from their leaves. Fern leaves are called fronds, which are diverse in size, texture and color, depending on species. Regardless of the appearance of fronds, they facilitate ferns' reproductive cycle.

Similar to flowering plants , ferns have roots, stems and leaves. However, unlike flowering plants , ferns do not have flowers or seeds; instead, they usually reproduce sexually by tiny spores or sometimes can reproduce vegetatively, as exemplified by the walking fern. Stomata are small adjustable pores located on the surface of leaves.

Asked by: Cosmina Henjes asked in category: General Last Updated: 30th April, What is the difference between ferns and fern allies? However, there are two principal differences between ferns and fern allies. First, unlike the ferns , the leaves of fern allies , known technically as microphylls, are small, scale-like structures with a single mid-vein.

Second, fern allies make their spores at the bases of their leaves or on specialized branches. Do bryophytes have roots? They don't have roots. Instead they have thin root-like growths called rhizoids that help anchor them.

Because they don't have roots and stems to transport water, mosses dry out very quickly, so they are usually found in moist habitats. There is a first generation moss, the gametophyte. Do Ferns have seeds? Ferns belong to an ancient group of plants that developed before flowering plants, and they do not produce flowers and therefore do not produce seed.

Ferns reproduce by means of spores, a dust-like substance produced in capsules called sori on the underside of the fern leaf, or frond. How do ferns reproduce?