Fern Research Paper

Ferns are a kind of seedless vascular plant that develop haploid spores in order to reproduce. In a typical fern life cycle, the parent fern will produce haploid spores inside of multicellular structures called sporangia, which are found on the underside of the leaves of a mature fern plant in groups or clusters known as sori (Cordle et. al. 2007). Once the spores are produced they will disperse and will eventually undergo mitosis under favorable conditions in order to produce small gametophytes which will eventually mature and produce eggs and sperm in female and male gametangia, respectively. When conditions are ideal, meaning water is present, the sperm will be released and swim to the eggs within the female gametangia in order to fertilize them (Cordle et. al. 2007). This fertilization results in a diploid zygote which is supported by the original gametophyte while it undergoes mitosis and develops into an embryo which …show more content…
In a previous experiment it was determined that when the nitrogen is provided to the spores in the form of nitrates or nitrites, germination of fern spores can be inhibited or completely stopped by using higher concentrations (Milan and Whittier, 1990). On the other hand, when the nitrogen came from ammonium, the germination of fern spores increased (Milan and Whittier, 1990). The experiment determined that the effects of nitrogen from nitrates/nitrites and ammonium had the opposite effects on the germination of the fern spores and so the germination of spores that were supplied with nitrogen from ammonium nitrate was tested and it was found that these spores did not germinate as much as the purely ammonium spores but they did germinate better than the purely nitrate spores (Milan and Whittier,