Question

1. What do apogamic non-vascular plants and gametophytic apomixis of flowering plants share in common?

2. How does gametophytic apomixis and apogamy differ?

3. How does gametophytic apoximis and vegetative apomixis differ?

Answer 1

1. Apogamy of non-vascular plants and gametophytic apomixis of flowering plants both are related to the reproductive processes in those plants. Both these process does not involve a sexual reproductive path. Fertilization or the fusion of gametes is absent in both. There isn't the production of gametes.

2. Apogamy is the development of sporophytic plant from a gametophyte without fertilization. This is seen in some of the sterile ferns. These ferns can produce spores which are viable and can generate into a new individual gametophyte. Here in apogamy spores produce plants in the ploidy level of gametophyte with the help of spores.

Apomixic condition is seen where the normal sexual reproduction is replaced by the asexual reproduction methods. For example a plantlet may arise in the place of a seed to generate a new plant. This didn't involves a sexual reproductive way. Here the meiosis is not an essential condition and doesn't involve spores but direct asexual reproductive structures such as plantlets, bulbils in the place of flowers etc.