Question

4. Illustrate the life cycle of mosses

5. Explain nutrient and water transport in nonvascular plants and how this affects attainable plant height.

6. Discuss in which environments and on which substrates nonvascular plants such as mosses can grow. Although nonvascular plants are much more basic with regards to their evolved structural complexity (an old term for this is “primitive”), do they have an edge in certain conditions?

Answer 1

Q.4. Answer- life cycle of mosses.1. Life cycle of moss starts with release of spores from capsule which release spores from small lidlike structure operculum.

2. A spore germinates and develops into filamentous, branched protonema which further develops into leafy gametophyte.

3. The gametophyte has organs needed for sexual reproduction. Mature antheridium releases spore and it is attracted towards female reproductive organ archegonium. In this phase sperm fuses with egg and zygote is produced.

4. When zygote grows by cell divisions, it becomes sporophyte and archegonium divides and forms Calyptra

5. Sporophyte contains capsule and seta. Then by asexual reproduction of capsule spores are again released to start new life cycle of moss.