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A genus of fungi, remarkable for the great quantity of spores, forming a fine dust, which is thrown out like smoke when the plant is compressed or burst; puffball.

e order Lycopodiaceæ; club moss. Lycopodium powder, a fine powder or dust composed of the spores of Lycopodium, and other plants of the order Lycopodiaceæ. It is highly inflammable, and is sometimes used in the manufacture of fireworks, and the artificial representation of lightning.

A combining form signifying long, large, great; as macrodiagonal, macrospore.

A sporangium or conceptacle containing only large spores; -- opposed to microsporangium. Both are found in the genera Selaginella, Isoctes, and Marsilia, plants remotely allied to ferns.

Of or pertaining to macrospores.

destroying the corpuscles, thus liberating in the blood plasma an immense number of small spores called merozoites. An indefinite but not ultimated number of such generations may follow, but if meanwhile the host is bitten by a mosquito, the parasites develop into gametes in the stomach of the insect. These conjugate,…

of Fungi Imperfecti, including those with no asci nor pycnidia, but as a rule having the spores in cavities without special walls. They cause many of the plant diseases known as anthracnose.

An alga of any kind that produces blackish spores, or seed dust. The melanosperms include the rockweeds and all kinds of kelp. -- Mel`a*no*sper"mous, a.

A form of spore, usually elongate or falciform, and somewhat amoboid, produced by segmentation of the schizonts of certain Sporozoa, as the malaria parasite.

A sporangium or conceptacle containing only very minute spores. Cf. Macrosporangium.

Of or pertaining to microspores.

es. The fruit is a small capsule usually opening by an apical lid, and so discharging the spores. There are many species, collectively termed Musci, growing on the earth, on rocks, and trunks of trees, etc., and a few in running water.

Having powers of self-motion, though unconscious; as, the motile spores of certain seaweeds.

tain red algæ, consisting of an external mass of filaments at length separating into tetraspores.

ts containing oöspheres, as in the rockweeds (Fucus), and the orders Vaucherieæ and Peronosporeæ.

exual 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 is the leafy plant.

The macrosporangium or case for the larger kind of spores in heterosporous flowerless plants.

An oögonium; also, a case containing oval or rounded spores of some other kind than oöspores.

Of or pertaining to an oöspore.

wth develops into a mass of cells, constituting a new individual like the parent; an egg, spore, germ, or germ cell. See Illust. of Mycropyle.