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fern life cycle
Understand how roots and leaves transport oxygen, carbon dioxide, and minerals vital to a plant's development
life cycle of a moss Close-up of the green, textured thallus of a liverwort plant with visible gametophytes, showing lobed, leaf-like structures typical of bryophytes. angiosperm life cycle spike moss life cycle Wind pollination pollination and fertilization cotyledons and germination General Sherman tree
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fern life cycle
fern life cycle The life cycle of the fern. (1) Clusters (sori) of sporangia (spore cases) grow on the undersurface of mature fern leaves. (2) Released from its spore case, the haploid spore is carried to the ground, where it germinates into a tiny, usually heart-shaped, gametophyte (gamete-producing structure), anchored to the ground by rhizoids (rootlike projections). (3) Under moist conditions, mature sperm are released from the antheridia and swim to the egg-producing archegonia that have formed on the gametophyte's lower surface. (4) When fertilization occurs, a zygote forms and develops into an embryo within the archegonium. (5) The embryo eventually grows larger than the gametophyte and becomes a sporophyte.

plant development

Written by
John Heslop-Harrison
Royal Society Research Professor, University College of Wales, Aberystwyth, University of Wales, 1977–85. Director, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, England, 1971–77. Author of numerous papers on development...
John Heslop-Harrison
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plant development, a multiphasic process in which two distinct plant forms succeed each other in alternating generations. One form, the sporophyte, is created by the union of gametes (sex cells) and is thus diploid (contains two sets of similar chromosomes). At maturity, the sporophyte produces haploid (containing a single set of chromosomes) spores, which grow into the gametophyte generation. At their sexual maturity, the gametophytes produce haploid gametes that unite to begin a new cycle.

Understand how roots and leaves transport oxygen, carbon dioxide, and minerals vital to a plant's development
Understand how roots and leaves transport oxygen, carbon dioxide, and minerals vital to a plant's developmentIn growing plants, roots and leaves play an essential role in transporting the materials the plant needs to survive, such as carbon dioxide, water, and mineral salts.
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Although both plants and animals share the chemical basis of inheritance and of translation of the genetic code into structural units called proteins, plant development differs from that of animals in several important ways. Higher plants sustain growth throughout life and, in this sense, are perpetually embryonic; animals, on the other hand, generally have a determinate period of growth, after which they are considered mature. Furthermore, both growth and organ formation in plants are influenced by their possession of a rigid cell wall and a fluid-filled space called the vacuole, two features unique to the plant cell. Conversely, certain features of animal cells are absent in plants. Notable is the lack of cellular movements and fusions that play an important part in tissue and organ development in higher animals.

General features

Life cycles

life cycle of a moss
life cycle of a mossLife cycle of a mossThe life cycle of bryophytes consists of an alternation of two stages, or generations, called the sporophyte and the gametophyte. Each generation has a different physical form. When a spore germinates, it usually produces the protonema, which precedes the appearance of the more elaborately organized gametophytic plant, the gametophyte, which produces the sex organs. The female sex organ is a flask-shaped structure called the archegonium. The archegonium contains a single egg in a swollen lower portion that is more than one cell thick. The neck of the archegonium is a single cell layer thick and sheathes a single thread of cells that forms the neck canal. When mature and completely moist, the neck canal cells of the archegonium disintegrate, releasing a column of fluid to the neck canal and the surrounding water. The egg remains in the base of the archegonium, ready for fertilization. The male sex organ, the antheridium, is a saclike structure made up of a jacket of sterile cells one cell thick; it encloses many cells, each of which, when mature, produces one sperm. When wet, the jacket of the mature antheridium ruptures to release the sperm into the water. When a sperm enters the field of the fluid diffused from the neck canal, it swims toward the site of greatest concentration of this fluid, therefore down the neck canal to the egg. Upon reaching the egg, the sperm burrows into its wall, and the egg nucleus unites with the sperm nucleus to produce the diploid zygote. The zygote remains in the archegonium and undergoes many mitotic cell divisions to produce an embryonic sporophyte. Mature bryophytes have a single sporangium (spore-producing structure) on each sporophyte. The sporangium generally terminates an elongate stalk, or seta, when the sporangium is ready to shed its spores and is capped by a lid, or operculum. The sporangium rupture usually involves specialized structures that enhance expulsion of the spores away from the parent gametophyte.

The life cycle of all tracheophytes (vascular plants), bryophytes (mosses and liverworts), and many algae and fungi is based on an alternation of generations, or different life phases: the gametophyte, which produces gametes, or sex cells, alternating with the sporophyte, which produces spores. Gametophytes develop from the spores and, like them, are normally haploid; i.e., each cell has one set of chromosomes. Sporophytes develop from a fertilized egg, or zygote, that results from the fusion of gametes (fertilization) formed by the gametophytes and are accordingly diploid; i.e., each cell has two sets of chromosomes. Although the two generations are phases of one life cycle, they have independent developmental histories; each begins as a single cell, passes through a juvenile period, matures, and gives rise to the alternate phase.

gametophyte
gametophyteA liverwort gametophyte.

The alternating generations typically have different forms (i.e., are heteromorphic); this is true for the bryophytes and for all vascular plants, including lower vascular plants (ferns and allies), angiosperms (flowering plants), and gymnosperms (conifers and allies). General rules for vascular plants are that the sporophyte generation is physically the larger, has a more complex developmental history, produces a greater range of cell types, and expresses a more diverse biochemistry; the gametophyte is often diminutive, reduced in the case of the angiosperms to a mere few cells. In the bryophytes, the gametophyte generation, rather than the sporophyte, is the more conspicuous.

angiosperm life cycle
angiosperm life cycleLife cycle of a typical angiosperm. The angiosperm life cycle consists of a sporophyte phase and a gametophyte phase. The cells of a sporophyte body have a full complement of chromosomes (i.e., the cells are diploid, or 2n); the sporophyte is the typical plant body that one sees when one looks at an angiosperm. The gametophyte arises when cells of the sporophyte, in preparation for reproduction, undergo meiotic division and produce reproductive cells that have only half the number of chromosomes (i.e., haploid, or n). A two-celled microgametophyte (called a pollen grain) germinates into a pollen tube and through division produces the haploid sperm. An eight-celled megagametophyte (called the embryo sac) produces the egg. Fertilization occurs with the fusion of a sperm with an egg to produce a zygote, which eventually develops into an embryo. After fertilization, the ovule develops into a seed, and the ovary develops into a fruit.

Although the gametophyte generation in vascular plants is small and has limited physiological capabilities, its cells must convey genes capable of directing the sporophytic developmental pattern, because the pattern is transmitted through the gametes to the zygote. The expression of “sporophytic” genes must therefore be repressed in the gametophyte, probably from the time of spore formation (sporogenesis). Correspondingly, events associated with gamete formation (gametogenesis) or fertilization must somehow free the sporophytic genes and thus permit the zygote to enter the sporophytic developmental pattern. Although it might be supposed that the “switch” is associated with the difference in chromosome number between the haploid spore (a single set) and the diploid zygote (a double set), this has been shown not to be the determining factor.

The alternation of generations illustrates an important principle, namely that cell lineages arising from single parental cells containing the same genetic potentiality may pursue mutually exclusive developmental patterns. Channelling, or canalizing, events of this nature occur repeatedly in the course of development of an individual plant, beginning with the pattern of cell division from the very first cleavage of the zygote cell.

Body plans

Collectively, plants manifest a wide range of body plans, ranging from small multicellular structures to enormous trees. Among nonvascular plants, true parenchyma is found in the bryophytes, in both the gametophyte and sporophyte phases. The development of the moss gametophyte illustrates the transition from a filamentous to a highly organized three-dimensional growth form. The moss spore germinates into a filamentous plant, the protonema, which later produces a leafy shoot. This type of transition from simple to more complex growth form is accompanied by the synthesis of new kinds of ribonucleic acids (RNA’s), presumably through the activation of genes that were not expressed during the early growth of the gametophyte.

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Much of the remainder of this section is concerned with the development of the complex body forms of vascular-plant sporophytes, which do not normally pass through any filamentous stages. It may be noted, however, that, in the course of evolution, the capacity for this type of growth has not been lost, since it may be adopted by cells grown in tissue cultures in the laboratory.