Bryophyte Week - Haploid Holiday

Last week's blizzard day generated a laboratory crunch this week. Even in a survey type class, it takes more than a three-hour laboratory period to cover bryophytes. Typical, bryophytes just get no respect. So the rest of the morning will be spent rounding up the live specimens from the greenhouse so that they may be tortured all afternoon. As always Riccia seems to be missing. It always seems to get rediscovered, but usually too late. However you can always count on the marchantioid liverworts. Here's a nice image of one from the field showing the broad (~1 cm) ribbon-like thallus. The photosynthetic chambers each with a central pore are nicely evident, as is the dichotomous branching. Liversworts are quite uncommon anywhere in the maize and soybean desert; this image is from Washington near the home of the infamous Dr. Chips, who lurks around this blog from time to time. Like all bryophytes, and unlike all other land plants, the organism is haploid so that 2nd set of chromosomes is so over rated.

Plant Porn

One of the big problems faced by early land plants is they retained the swimming sperm of their algal ancestors, a problem that was finally solved by the seed habit. Sperm are small so even swimming short distances to find an egg to fertilize is quite a challenge, but this also means that even a film of water, the morning dew, can provide an adequate aquarium for sperm to swim in, and lacking vascular tissue, such bryophytic plants conduct water along their surface rather than through their interior. But at the great risk to the Phactor’s reputation for wholesome botany, check out this link for some liverwort porn. Clouds of sperm ejaculated, atomized some 15 cm into the air capable of fertilizing any and all females in the vicinity. These are real porn stars of the plant kingdom. Oh, did the Phactor mention that the biggest sperm were also found in the plant kingdom?

HT to my-plant blog.