EVERYDAY SCIENCE

Detailed explanation-1: -In seedless vascular plants, such as ferns and horsetails, the plants reproduce using haploid, unicellular spores instead of seeds. The spores are very lightweight (unlike many seeds), which allows for their easy dispersion in the wind and for the plants to spread to new habitats.

Detailed explanation-2: -Sporangia in Seedless Plants The sporophyte bears the sporangia (singular, sporangium): organs that first appeared in the land plants. The term “sporangia” literally means “spore in a vessel”: it is a reproductive sac that contains spores.

Detailed explanation-3: -In seedless vascular plants such as ferns, the sporophyte releases spores from the undersides of leaves. The spores develop into tiny, separate gametophytes, from which the next generation of sporophyte plants grows.

Detailed explanation-4: -The vascular plants (the “tracheophytes”) are a monophyletic clade of polysporangiate lineages characterized by the capacity to produce xylem and phloem in addition to the ability to form cuticles, stomata, and spores with chemically and mechanically resistant walls.

Detailed explanation-5: -When vascular plants reproduce asexually, they may do so either by budding, branching, or tillering (vegetative reproduction) or by producing spores or seed genetically identical to the sporophytes that produced them (agamospermy in seed plants, apogamy in pteridophytes).