Seedless Plants

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Seedless Plants

• Mosses and Liverworts
• Ferns, Horsetails, and Club Mosses

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Mosses and Liverworts

• Small
• Live on bark, rocks, and soil
• No vascular system
• Must live in places that are wet
• No true roots, stems, or leaves

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Mosses
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Liverworts
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Mosses and Liverworts

• Live together in large groups
• Covering soil or rocks in a mat of tiny green
  plants
• Each moss has rhizoids (root-like structures)
• Rhizoids help anchor the plant

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Importance of Mosses and Liverworts

• Usually the first plants to inhabit a new
  environment.
• Form a thin layer of soil when they die.
• They help hold the soil in place which prevents
  erosion.
• Nesting material for birds.
• Peat moss can be burned as fuel.

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Ferns, Horsetails, and Club Mosses

• Grow tall
• Have vascular systems

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Ferns
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Ferns

• Can grow almost anywhere.
• Have an underground stem called a rhizome.
• Leaves are called fronds.

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Horsetails
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Horsetails

• Small vascular plants.
• Grow less than 1.3 meters tall.
• Grow in wet, marshy places.
• Stems are hollow and contain cilia.
• Pioneers used them to scrub pots and pans.

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Club Mosses

• 25 cm tall.
• Grow in woodlands.
• Unlike other mosses, they have vascular tissue.

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Importance of Seedless Vascular Plants

• Help form soil when they die.
• Also hold soil in place to prevent erosion.
• Ferns serve as house plants.
• Some are cooked and eaten.
• Formed coal.