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Ancient Ferns: Nature's Survivors

Ferns are an ancient type of vascular plant that predate flowering plants and dinosaurs. They reproduce using spores rather than seeds, which are produced in structures called sori. The spores grow into small heart-shaped gametophytes that can later develop into sporophytes - the adult fern plant. This lifecycle allows ferns to thrive in difficult environments with little energy expenditure. Ferns were one of the dominant plant groups when dinosaurs roamed Earth millions of years ago, and remain successful plants today.

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Lyle Kenneth Geraldez
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148 views2 pages

Ancient Ferns: Nature's Survivors

Ferns are an ancient type of vascular plant that predate flowering plants and dinosaurs. They reproduce using spores rather than seeds, which are produced in structures called sori. The spores grow into small heart-shaped gametophytes that can later develop into sporophytes - the adult fern plant. This lifecycle allows ferns to thrive in difficult environments with little energy expenditure. Ferns were one of the dominant plant groups when dinosaurs roamed Earth millions of years ago, and remain successful plants today.

Uploaded by

Lyle Kenneth Geraldez
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Lyle Kenneth Geraldez

10 Photon

Seedless Wonder of the Ancient


Close your eyes and picture dinosaurs roaming ancient Earth. What plants do you see growing
beneath their feet? Chances are good ferns are one of the first plants that come to mind when
you picture "the forest primeval," and you'd be right. Ferns covered many parts of the Earth
during the times of the dinosaurs, and continue to thrive today.
Ferns are a very ancient family of plants: early fern fossils predate the beginning of the Mesozoic
era, 360 million years ago. They are older than land animals and far older than the dinosaurs.
They were thriving on Earth for two hundred million years before the flowering plants evolved.
Ferns are type of vascular plant, containing vascular tissues, but somehow unusual.
One of the things that sets ferns apart from many other
vascular plants is the fact that they don't flower, and they don't
produce seeds. These type of plants are called pteridophytes.
Ferns reproduce using spores. These spores are transported by
wind or sometimes are stuck to the coats of animals moving
by. The spores have very little nutritive value for predators,
and don't take much energy for the plant to produce, giving
these plants an adaptive edge in difficult growing
environments.
A fern has a leafy branch called a frond, which consists of
Matteuccia struthiopteris
smaller leaflets known as pinnae. There are tiny spots under a
Ostrich Fern
frond where spores grow inside casings referred to as
sporangia. These sporangia form a sorus, which sometimes exist on the veins of a fern leaf. They
are also sometimes found under the pinnae. Not all fronds contain spores.
If the spore finds suitable conditions, it will grow into a tiny heart-shaped plantlet called
a prothallus or gametophyte. In this regard, the spore behaves quite like the seed of a higher
plant, except that what grows from the seed is the full adult plant, but what grows from the spore
is the gametophyte. The gametophyte is not the full fern, but a plant with only half the genetic
material of the adult fern, rather like a sperm cell or an egg cell. The gametophyte is the
intermediate stage from spore to adult fern.
If the gametophyte finds itself in a suitably moist place, fertilisation takes place, and it is
transformed into a complete adult plant. It becomes whats called a sporophyte. Given the right
conditions, this tiny sporophyte will continue to grow into a full adult fern, where it can produce
spores of its own, to repeat the life cycle. Sporophyte can be easily recognized because it looks
like typical fern.
Ferns are very succesful plants. Next time you find a fern, remember that these plants are older
than the first land animal, much older than dinosaurs. Give time to appreciate these wonderful
and timeless, product of nature.

Bibliography

MOSI Outside: Five Fun Fern Facts. (n.d.). Retrieved August 27, 2016, from
http://lepcurious.blogspot.com/2016/02/five-fun-fern-facts.html

Fern. (n.d.). Retrieved August 27, 2016, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fern

About ferns. (n.d.). Retrieved August 27, 2016, from


http://www.home.aone.net.au/~byzantium/ferns/about.html

Fern Facts. (n.d.). Retrieved August 27, 2016, from


http://www.softschools.com/facts/plants/fern_facts/559/

How do ferns reproduce? (n.d.). Retrieved August 27, 2016, from


https://www.reference.com/science/ferns-reproduce-2eca4032423c2338#

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