Question

Two roommates with little botanical knowledge thought they could make a quick profit by growing ferns for the commercial florist market. They thought it would be very easy. All they had to do was collect the thousands of spores produced by a fern on their desktop and plant these like tiny seeds in individual pots. If they placed the pots in the sun, fertilized and watered the spores, and waited about a month they would have beautiful plants that they could sell for several dollars apiece. Why are they doomed to failure?

Answer 1

The life cycle of ferns are very different from the other plants.

The life cycle of ferns involves

The spores germinate into gaemetophytes and gaemetophytes produce sperm and egg cells which fertilize and an adult fern begins growing.

Now the fertilized gaemetophyte starts looking like a mossy growth and then young fronds start to appear which rises out of the moss.

Now these young fronds cannot tolerate direct sunlight for a longer period of time and if sunlight falls for an extended period they may die easily as tiny stems are not enough strong to sustain sirect light and will dry out

Thus they placed the pot in the sun which will lead toyoung fronds not able to tolerate direct sunlight and they may die easily and this wil lead to their failure.