Other Seedless Vascular Plants

The other seedless vascular plants include the whisk ferns, club mosses, and horsetails. Clubmosses are widely distributed. In many places, they are known as ground pine or running cedar. They are used as decorations during the Christmas holidays throughout rural Appalachia. The spores produced by Lycopodium species were used to make the flashes for the first flash photography. These dry spores are very flammable and produce a brilliant flash and a resulting puff of smoke when ignited.

 

lycopodium.png

Figure 23. Lycopodium. This image shows a green clubmoss commonly called ground pine or running cedar. It gets this name because it resembles small pine or cedar trees connected by its rhizomes along the ground.

 

Whisk ferns and horsetails are only represented by one surviving genus, Psilotum and Equisetum respectfully. Psilotum is not widely distributed, occurring in the tropics and some subtropical areas. Equisetum is more widely distributed and is considered to be a noxious weed in some areas.

horsetails

Figure 24. Horsetails growing trail-side in Muir Woods near San Francisco. These have a central stalk with whorls of leaves fused at nodules which get closer together towards the top of the stalk.

 

 


Self Assessment

Answer the following questions.

 

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