Ferns And Their Relatives

Ferns and Their Relatives

-What is a Fern?
Fern is a flowerless plant that has feathery or leafy fronds and reproduces by spores released from the undersides of the fronds. Ferns have a vascular system for the transport of water and nutrients.
*Characteristics of Seedless and Vascular Plants:
Includes: ferns, club mosses, and horsetails
Have vascular tissue
They are able to grow bigger and taller
Within vascular plants is the phloem, the vessel that transports food, and the xylem, which transports water
Vascular plants actually live in both terrestrial and aquatic environments
They have true stems, roots and leaves. *Characteristic of Ferns:
Are vascular plants
Ferns can live in drier places
Ferns have a highly developed vascular system with vessels that are reinforced with lignin (a woody material)
Ferns can grow tall: tree ferns can be several meters tall, while most mosses are limited to a few centimeters
Have vascular tissue and use spores to reproduce *Vascular Tissue
Plants grow very tall because vascular tissue solves the problem of support and transportation.
Vascular tissue transports water quickly throughout the plant’s body
It provides strength and stability to a plant.

*Structure of Ferns
Ferns have true stems, leaves and roots
The roots of most fern are undergrounds
Roots are structures that anchor the fern to the ground , and absorb water and nutrients from the soil
Frond is divided into many smaller parts, that looks like small leaves
They resemble the top of violin, their young leaves are often called fiddleheads.
*The Importance of Ferns
Ferns are importance in many ways:
They are popular houseplants because they are attractive and easy to grow. For example: Orchids are often grown on the tangled masses of fern roots. People eat some ferns. Tiny pockets in the fern’s leaves provide a home for bacteria. The bacteria produce natural fertilizers that help the rice plants grow.
*Reproduction of ferns
The familiar fern with its visible fronds is the sporophyte
Underside the mature fronds spore develop into tiny spore cases
When the spores are released wind and water carried it when it land on the moist or shaded soil it developed into gametophyte.
Fern gametophytes are tiny plants that grow low to the ground.
*Club mosses and Horsetails

Two other groups of seedless, vascular plants are the club mosses and horse tail
Club mosses and horsetail have true stems, leaves and roots like fern. But differ from moss that club mosses have vascular tissue.
The plant, which looks like the small branch of a pine tree, is sometime called ground pine or princess pine. It grows in moist woodlands and near steams.