Nearly allied to ferns is a little group of small aquatic plants, the Rhizocarpeæ (pepperworts), which either float on the water or creep along shallow bottoms. These are chiefly curious from having two kinds of spores produced from separate sporanges; smaller and larger “microspores” undergoing progressive sub-division without the formation of a distinct prothallium; each cell giving origin to an antherozoid, a generative process said to belong exclusively to flowering plants, corresponding indeed to the pollen grains of higher plants.
Structure of Phanerogamiæ or Flowering Plants.
The two great divisions of the vegetable kingdom are known as Cryptogamia and Phanerogamia. It does not follow, however, that there is any abrupt break between the two, as will appear from the context. Although it is customary to speak of the flowering plants as a higher grade of life, yet there is an intermediary class of Phanerogamiæ in which the conspicuous parts of the generative system partake of a condition closely resembling those of the higher Cryptogamiæ, observed in Gymnosperms, Coniferæ, and Cycadæ. So it may be said the distinctive character of the former is that of reproduction by seeds rather than flowers. The progress of botanical science during the latter half of the Victorian reign has been quite as remarkable as that of histology; while the comparative physiology and morphology of plants have perhaps advanced even more rapidly because the ground was newer. The consequence is that the specialisation of botanical science has been brought about con-currently with a more comprehensive nomenclature. The chief cause in this instance of modern specialisation is utility. “If we look at the great groups of plants from a broad point of view, it will be seen that the fungi and the phanerogams occupy public attention on other grounds than do the algæ, mosses and ferns. Algæ are especially a physiologist’s group, employed in questions on nutrition, reproduction, and cell division and growth. The Bryophyta and Pteridophyta, are, on the other hand, the domain of the morphologist concerned with such questions as the alternations of generations and the evolution of the higher plants.
“Fungi and phanerogams, while equally or even more employed by specialists in morphology and physiology, appeal widely to general interest, and evidently so on the ground of utility. Without saying that this enhances the importance of either group, it certainly attracts scientific attention to them. However, the histology of the minute cell, in addition to its importance from an academical point of view, has a special interest for the microscopist.”
It would be impossible to find anything more remarkable in histology than the detailed agreement in the structure and behaviour of the nucleus in the higher plants and the higher animals, an agreement which is conspicuously manifest in those special divisions which take place during the maturation of the sexual cells.
So with regard to the question of “alternation of generations.” We have known since the important discoveries of Hofmeister that the development of a large part of the vegetable kingdom involves a regular alternation of two distinct generations, the one which is sexual being constantly succeeded, so far as the normal cycle is concerned, by the other which is asexual. This alternation is most marked in the mosses and ferns. In the Bryophyta the ordinary moss or liverwort plant is the sexual generation of the ovum, which, when fertilised, gives rise to the moss-fruit, and represents the asexual stage. The latter is once more seen to form spores from which the sexual plant is again developed.
In the Pteridophyta the alternation is equally regular, but the relative development of the two generations is totally different, the sexual form being the insignificant prothallus, while the whole fern-plant, as we ordinarily know it, is the asexual generation.
The thallus of some of the lower Bryophyta is quite comparable with the prothallus of a fern, so as regards the sexual generation there is no difficulty in seeing the relation of the two classes; but when we come to the asexual generation or sporophyte the case is totally different. There is no appreciable resemblance between the fruit of any of the Bryophyta and the plant of any vascular Cryptogam.
“It is now known that in the higher plants a remarkable numerical change takes place in the constituents of the nucleus of the cell shortly before fertilisation. In angiospermous plants a reduction of the chromosomes occurs shortly before differentiation of the sexual cells. Thus, in the case of the lily, fertilisation is not the simple fusion of nuclear bodies. These spheres are seen to fuse in pairs, and then by position to determine the plane of first cleavage of the ovum; agreeing, in fact, closely with what is observed to take place in the animal kingdom.”
In the higher grades of plants it will be evident that the several tissues that compose their bodies are not found in the root, stem, and leaf without definite order and purpose, but that they are grouped into systems for the performance of different kinds of work. In all flowering plants at least three different systems may be clearly distinguished. These are the epidermal or boundary tissue system, the fundamental or ground tissue system, and the fibro-vascular or conducting system. All three systems of tissue originate from meristem cells, located at the growing point of the stem and root.