Learn How Ferns Reproduce Fern Life Cycle

have you ever looked at the underside of fern leaf or frond and found it covered with small yellowish brown or maybe black clusters they look like tiny piles of fine dirt and they come in various shapes organized into different patterns although circular shape is the most common so what are they and why do friends have them if you watched my video on plant classification and if you didn't you should you know that ferns are vascular plants so they have true roots and vascular tissues allowing them to stay erect and grow tall just look at the size of this tree fern but compared to the majority of land plants there's something ferns are missing they have no flowers or seeds however they are able to reproduce so how does the reproduction work that's the role of those strange dirt clusters which are called called sorai sorai is the plural but if we talk about just one it is sorus each sorus is made up of sporangia which are these little balls that are clearly visible when cut open one sorus in some ferns sporangia clusters have indusia which are these protective flaps that cover and protect each sorus until the spores are ready to be released ferns as we know them large green plants with FRS are the spori life stage in the fern life cycle that means they produce spores as suggested by the name spori and their cells are diploid having one set of chromosomes from each parent spores are produced inside sporangia via cell division called meosis during this process the number of chromosomes in daughter cells is reduced by half resulting in hpid spores when spores are are ready to be released sporangia need to open to release them and there's special mechanism for that you can see in this magnified photo that each sporangium has this group or row of cells creating seam this is an annuals through the process involving water evaporation the annuals cavitates and catapults the spores out of the sporangium when spores land on suitable moisture surface they start to germinate and via cell division called mitosis grow into prois remember spores are hpid and during mitosis the number of chromosomes in daughter cells stays the same so our prois is heid gide the prois is anchored to the soil by Riso since it's very tiny only few millimeters long we tend to not notice the stage of fur life cycle in nature however if you ever find yourself around ferns look closely on the ground around them and you might find some tiny gites they are mostly heart-shaped and look lot like liver wordss as already mentioned the prois is the gamified stage in the fern life cycle which means it produces gametes both male and female sexual structures anoria and aragonia respectively are formed on proales so it is bisexual although in some cases Ania and aragonia are found on separate gyes other times when both male and female sexual structures are located at the same proales there are various strategies in place such as pheromone production that prevents self fertilization endia produce male gametes flated sperm while aragonia produce female gametes XG similarly to the sperm of Moses Fern sperm moves using flagella and it is fully dependent on water to get transported to an this dependence on water is one of the reasons you find ferns mostly in wet Shady habitats once sperm successfully fertilizes the egg zygote forms that later develops into an embryo both gametes sprim and egg are hloy but as they fuse and the embryo is formed the spori part of the fern life cycle begins as the embryo grows new spori plant emerges out of the gide or prothallus this young spori fern plant is attached to the gide from which it takes all of its water and nutrients until it grows into mature spori plant and the gide dies off even though sexual reproduction is the most common way ferns reproduce it is not the only way look at this Fern whose fronts are covered by what look like miniature replicas of the fern plant this particular Fern is known as hen and chickens Fern or mutter Fern and got these photos in New Zealand where it is native hen and chickens Fern nicely shows vegetative reproduction by bull Bells which form on the front and later fall off and grow into mature plants the other and much more common form of aexual reproduction in ferns is cloning by romes wrenching romes can often create large Fern colonies if you enjoyed this video please let me know by commenting and subscribing to this Channel and if you wouldd like to support my work please consider joining us over on patreon as always thank you so much for watching and I'll see you next week