Identifier: plantstheirway00ston (find matches)
Title: Plants and their ways in South Africa
Year: 1915 (1910s)
Authors: Stoneman, Bertha, 1866-
Subjects: Plants
Publisher: London, Longmans, Green
Contributing Library: The LuEsther T Mertz Library, the New York Botanical Garden
Digitizing Sponsor: The LuEsther T Mertz Library, the New York Botanical Garden

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um, which is found in Eastern districts. Fig. 203.—1. Mossplant. II. Swim-ming sperm-cell(magnified).(From Thom^ andBennetts Struc-tural and Physio-logical Botany.) ^ The capsule with its stalk is the sporophyte.At the base of the stalk, the foot draws nourishmentfrom the leafy part, the gametophyte. The twogenerations, the one bearing the sexual cells and the other the spores, al-ternate with one another and exhibit what is known as AHernation ofGeneration in plants. 230 Plants and their Ways in South Africa Maiden Hair and most of the South African ferns haveshort creeping stems, but Cyathea of Natal, and the beautifulIfemitelia, of Knysna and the West, have woody stems whichgrow to quite a height. On the under side of most fern leaves you will find brownspots. Some people cut their ferns down and burn themwhen they find them there, thinking that they are scale insects.When the spots get quite brown, gently shake a leaf overwhite paper. A brown dust will appear on the paper. These
Text Appearing After Image:
Fig. 204.—Longitudinal section through the sporophyte of Pellia epiphylla^R, rhizoids ; I, involucre ; F, foot of sporophyte ; Se, seta ; C, capsule ; W.wall of capsule ; Wa, wall of archegonium ; S, spores ; N, remains of neck ofarchegonium ; A, unfertilized archegonium (highly magnified). (From Evans Intermediate Text Book of Botany.) are the fern spores, contained within clusters of spore-casesforming the dots. A dot is called a sorus (plural, sori).When the spores are ripe and have fallen in moist places, theyburst their brown walls and begin to grow. In a few weeks aspore will grow into a filmy, green, heart-shaped plant. Lookunder the shelves of greenhouses or on the outside of pots inwhich ferns are growing. They are often abundant there.People call them Moss, but we know that moss leaves areborne on stems. Each one of these plants grows by itself. How Does the Fern Plant Come ?—On the under sideof the plants which are called prothallia are rhizoids and Classification of Pl

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