EVERYDAY SCIENCE

Detailed explanation-1: -Nonvascular plants include liverworts, hornworts, and mosses. They lack roots, stems, and leaves. Nonvascular plants are low-growing, reproduce with spores, and need a moist habitat.

Detailed explanation-2: -Vascular plants like ferns and horsetails don’t have seeds, they reproduce with spores! These plants have two stages, the gametophyte stage and the sporophyte stage. The sporophyte stage is what you are probably most familiar with. This is when the fern has fronds with spores on the underside.

Detailed explanation-3: -The sporophyte produces haploid spores, and these develop into the next generation of gametophyte plants. Then the cycle repeats.

Detailed explanation-4: -When released from the capsule, spores are dispersed by wind to other locations. Spores that germinate develop into new liverwort plants. Liverworts can also reproduce asexually through fragmentation (plant develops from a piece of another plant) and gemmae formation.

Detailed explanation-5: -Many nonvascular plants also have the capacity to reproduce asexually as gametophytes, either by fragmentation or via specialized propagules called gemmae.