Table of Contents
What is the significance of ferns?
The fern symbolizes eternal youth. To the indigenous Maori of New Zealand, the fern represented new life and new beginnings. To the Japanese, the fern symbolizes family and the hope for future generations. According to Victorians, the fern symbolized humility and sincerity.
What is considered to be the evolutionary advanced group of ferns?
More than 80% of today’s fern species are classified as polypody ferns; the current class name derives from this group name. According to recent genetic analyses, these are the most evolutionarily advanced ferns, and they may have arisen after the appearance of the angiosperms.
What do ferns do for the environment?
Plants possess capacity for removing contaminants from environmental components such as soil and water. Plant species including ferns have been exploited for capacity to remove various organic and inorganic contaminants from the environment (Alexandra et al. 2014; Drăghiceanu et al. 2014).
What are the biological and economic importance of ferns?
Ferns are not of major economic importance, but some are used for food, medicine, as biofertilizer, as ornamental plants and for remediating contaminated soil. They have been the subject of research for their ability to remove some chemical pollutants from the atmosphere.
Why are ferns so special?
Ferns are unique in land plants in having two separate living structures, so the ferny plant that we see out in the bush produces spores, and those spores, when they are released, don’t grow straight back into a new ferny plant. They grow into a little tiny plant that we call a gametophyte.
What was the primary result of the evolution of vascular tissue in plants?
Remember that vascular tissue is specialized tissue that transports water and nutrients throughout the plant. The development of vascular tissue allowed these plants to grow much taller than nonvascular plants, forming ancient swamp forests.
What is important in development of seed habit?
Development of heterospory or formation of two types of spores is important for the development of seed habit. The two types of spores are smaller male or microspores and larger female or megaspores. Two types of spores form two different types of gametophytes, male and female.
What is the economic importance of fern?
The greatest economic value of ferns has been in horticulture, with large nurseries supplying millions of plants annually for both indoor decoration and outdoor gardens and landscaping.
How do ferns help the rainforest?
How do ferns survive in the rainforest? They grow on the trunks and limbs of trees but unlike parasitic plants such as mistletoe, do not steal nutrients from their host tree. They survive instead on rainwater and the nutrients they get from trapped fallen leaves.
When did ferns evolve?
360 million years ago
The ferns and their relatives first appear in the fossil record some 360 million years ago in the late Devonian period. They diversified into many of the modern fern families and species during the “great fern radiation” of the Cretaceous period, from 145 to 66 million years ago.
What is the most important agent in fern reproduction?
Ferns reproduce by spores, which are generally produced on the bottom (abaxial side) of leaves by specialized structures called sporangia.
What is the importance of ferns to humans?
Importance to humans. As a group of plants, ferns are not of great economic value. Many different species have been used as a minor food source and for medicine in various parts of the world. Edible fern crosiers (young leaves with coiled hook-shaped tips) are popular in some areas.
What is the origin of the fern stem?
Fern – Fern – Evolutionary development: Despite a relatively large number of theories, the actual origins of the vegetative organs of ferns are still unknown. It is usually suggested that the original fern stem was protostelic (its stele having no pith or leaf gaps), but this is not necessarily true of the immediate ancestor of modern ferns.
When did Ferns become the most dominant group of plants?
While ferns first evolved in the Devonian, they became one of the most dominant groups of plants on the planet during the Carboniferous (299-369 mya). Growing alongside the giant tree lycophytes (e.g., Lepidodendron) in vast swamps, ferns thrived and diversified for several million years.
What is the economic value of a fern?
The greatest economic value of ferns has been in horticulture, with large nurseries supplying millions of plants annually for both indoor decoration and outdoor gardens and landscaping.