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An alternately produced form of certain cryptogamous plants, as ferns, mosses, and the like, which bears antheridia and archegonia, and so has sexual fructification, as contrasted with the sporophore, which is nonsexual, but produces spores in countless number. In ferns the oöphore is a minute prothallus; in mosses it…

ells capable of germination. It is one of the phenomena of alternate generation. Cf. Heterogamy, and Metagenesis.

olving, polygamy; having a plurality of wives; as, polygamous marriages; -- opposed to monogamous.

an one woman, or the practice of having several wives, at the same time; -- opposed to monogamy; as, the nations of the East practiced polygamy. See the Note under Bigamy, and cf. Polyandry.

The primary growth from the spore in certain cryptogamous plants; as, the proembryo, or protonema, of mosses.

erns, horsetails, club mosses, quillworts, and other like plants. See the Note under Cryptogamia. -- Pter"i*do*phyte`, n.

Any plant or species of the genus Isoetes, cryptogamous plants with a cluster of elongated four-tubed rushlike leaves, rising from a corm, and containing spores in their enlarged and excavated bases. There are about seventeen American species, usually growing in the mud under still, shallow water. So called from the sh…

A special branch which bears the fructification in many cryptogamous plants.

A genus of cryptogamous plants resembling Lycopodia, but producing two kinds of spores; also, any plant of this genus. Many species are cultivated in conservatories.

The fertilization of a flower by pollen from the same flower and without outer aid; autogamy.

, do not produce flowers in the popular sense. For this reason the terms Anthrophyta, Phænogamia, and Panerogamia have been superseded as names of the phylum by Spermatophyta.

Plants which produce seed; phænogamia. These plants constitute the highest grand division of the vegetable kingdom.

Any plant which produces true seeds; -- a term recently proposed to replace phænogam.

Capable of producing seeds; phænogamic.

A spore case in the cryptogamous plants, as in ferns, etc.

That alternately produced form of certain cryptogamous plants, as ferns, mosses, and the like, which is nonsexual, but produces spores in countless numbers. In ferns it is the leafy plant, in mosses the capsule. Cf. Oöphore.

ticulata, Molluscoidea, Echinodermata, Coelentera, and the Protozoa; in botany, the Phanerogamia, and the Cryptogamia.

Of or pertaining to the higher division of plants, that is, the phænogamous plants, all of which are vascular, in distinction from the cryptogams, which to a large extent are cellular only. Vascular plants (Bot.), plants composed in part of vascular tissue, as all flowering plants and the higher cryptogamous plants, or…

nder bundles of woody fiber not concentrically arranged, and with no true bark.} II. Cryptogamia.

us. Maunder (Treas. of Bot.) -- Witches' butter (Bot.), a name of several gelatinous cryptogamous plants, as Nostoc commune, and Exidia glandulosa. See Nostoc. -- Witch grass (Bot.), a kind of grass (Panicum capillare) with minute spikelets on long, slender pedicels forming a light, open panicle. -- Witch meal (Bot.)…