Lower vascular plant

Alternative titles: cryptogam; Pteridophyta; pteridophyte; seedless vascular plant; vascular cryptogam

lower vascular plant, formerly pteridophyte, also called vascular cryptogam,  any of the spore-bearing vascular plants, including the ferns, club mosses, spike mosses, quillworts, horsetails, and whisk ferns. Once considered of the same evolutionary line, these plants were formerly placed in the single group Pteridophyta and were known as the ferns and fern allies. Although modern studies have shown that the plants are not in fact related, these terms are still used in discussion of the lower vascular plants.

Vascular plants are those that possess a specialized conducting system for the transport of water, minerals, and food materials, as opposed to the more primitive bryophytes—mosses and liverworts—which lack such a system. They include both the seed plants—angiosperms and gymnosperms, the dominant plants on Earth today—and plants that reproduce by spores—the ferns and other so-called lower vascular plants.

The pteridophytes represent the oldest of land plants. In their early evolution (during the Devonian and Carboniferous periods, 416 million to 299 million years ago), there were many forms that are now extinct. The sphenophytes, for example, were once a large and diverse group of herbs, shrubs, vines, and trees but are now limited to only 15 species of horsetails; the woody lycophytes (club mosses) are entirely gone, leaving only a faint trail in their reduced modern representatives. Much of the fossil fern foliage of the Carboniferous Period is of the uncharacteristic seed ferns, which are the probable antecedents of the flowering plants. Modern ferns represent an explosion of evolution in Cretaceous times (145.5 million to 65.5 million years ago).

The pteridophytes are not an economically important group. Though they are used locally by peoples around the world for medicines and food, their greatest value today is in horticulture (ferns). Their remains, however, provide the bulk of the world’s coal beds, and their relatively simple structure and life cycle make them extremely valuable to researchers in understanding the overall picture of plant structure and evolution.

A discussion of all types of plants is found in the article plant. For a discussion of the other types of vascular plants, see gymnosperm and angiosperm. For a discussion of the nonvascular plants, see bryophyte.

Vascular system

The conduction system of vascular plants includes the xylem, composed largely of tracheids (tubular cells) in the lower vascular plants and gymnosperms and vessels in angiosperms, for conduction of water and minerals; and the phloem (sieve cells) for conduction of food materials. These vascular tissues are arranged in different patterns in different plant groups and in different parts of the plant.

The vascular cylinder of a stem or root is called the stele. The simplest and apparently most primitive type of stele is the protostele, in which the xylem is in the centre of the stem, surrounded by a narrow band of phloem. It in turn is bounded by a pericycle of one or two cell layers and a single cell layer of endodermis. The pericycle is generally the layer giving rise to the branches in roots, and the endodermis seems to regulate the flow of water and dissolved substances from the surrounding cortex. More common in fern stems are siphonosteles, having a pith in the centre with the vascular tissue forming a cylinder around it. Where a fern leaf is attached to a stem, a part of the vascular tissue of the stem goes into it (a leaf trace), making a slight gap, filled by parenchyma cells (generalized plant cells), in the vascular cylinder. If the leaves are distant and the stem long and creeping, a single gap will be seen in cross section; if leaves are close together or numerous, the gaps overlap, causing the cylinder to appear in cross section as a ring of disconnected round or elongate bars of vascular tissue.

Generally in pteridophytes, when the young organs mature, no further growth in diameter takes place. In several extinct groups a special ring of cells, the cambium, produced additional xylem to the inside and phloem cells to the outside (secondary growth as opposed to primary growth achieved by apical activity of the stem and root), resulting in increased diameter and a truly woody plant. This is common in many seed plants today, but in the extant pteridophytes only two genera (Botrychium and Isoetes) show a slight vestige of secondary growth. Even in today’s tree ferns (Cyathea, Dicksonia, Cibotium), with trunks up to 25 metres (80 feet) tall, the tissues are entirely the result of growth from the stem apex. Their strength is derived not from woody growth in diameter but by strengthening tissues surrounding the vascular bundles and in some cases by a mantle of roots.

Cell types

Cells of the vascular system

The cells of the vascular strands in pteridophytes are mainly tracheids, sieve cells, parenchyma, and endodermal cells. The tracheids, which comprise the xylem, or water-conducting tissue, are normally long, narrow, and attenuated at the tips. Their secondary walls display ladderlike (scalariform) thickenings. The largest tracheids are several centimetres long, but most are much smaller. Vessel cells, which have evolved in several lines of fern evolution and are the principal water-conducting cell type of flowering plants, are modified tracheids in which the end walls have lost their primary membranes, thus providing direct, unimpeded connections for water transport between the cells. Vessels, longitudinal channels composed of linear series of such perforated cells, have been reported from such diverse ferns as waterclover (Marsilea) and bracken (Pteridium).

The phloem is composed mainly of sieve cells—narrow, elongated units that differ from the tracheids in having persistent protoplasts and nuclei (i.e., they are still alive at functional maturity) and in lacking secondary walls with elaborate pitting. Sieve cells usually display more or less distinguishable sievelike areas, through which, presumably, organic foods pass in their travels through the stem and other plant organs. There are various arrangements of xylem and phloem, but usually a single strand composed of both is surrounded by parenchyma cells, the pericycle (a thin zone of living cells just within the endodermis), and an outer layer of cells with specialized walls, the endodermis. Endodermal cells in young stems are provided with special strips of secondary wall material known as Casparian strips on their radial walls (i.e., on all the cell walls except the two that face toward the stem axis and the stem surface). As the stems age, however, there is a tendency for the endodermal cells to become thick-walled around the entire circumference.

Other cells

The pith is made up of parenchyma cells as a rule, but, in some fern genera, scattered tracheid-like cells are found as well. The cells of pteridophyte stems differ from those of many seed plants in lacking collenchyma (modified parenchyma cells with expanded primary walls) and true stone cells. Latex-producing cells in lower vascular plants are rare.


Taproots are unknown in lower vascular plants. All pteridophyte roots are referred to as adventitious, in the sense that they arise at points along the stem. In internal structure, the roots are generally regarded as being much less diverse than the stems. They are protostelic, lacking pith and gaps, and they grow from one or more apical initials (cells that divide to produce all the cells and tissues of an organ), producing a root cap outwardly and the permanent tissues of the root inwardly. They entirely lack secondary growth (continued growth in thickness).

The surface cells of the epidermis produce root hairs near the root apex. These cells are generally thin-walled, in contrast to the cells of the cortex, lying below the surface, which ultimately may become very thick-walled. The root hairs have fundamental importance in absorption of water and nutrients and in attachment of the plant to the soil or other growing surface. The endodermis of the root is well marked, and Casparian strips are present, as in the stem. There is also a tendency for the endodermis in older parts of the roots to become thick-walled and hardened (sclerified).

The production and development of xylem tissue in the steles of most pteridophyte roots is diarch; that is, the first matured xylem appears along two lines at the outer periphery of the xylem strand. The xylem is surrounded by phloem, and the branch roots arise from the pericycle.


Stem appendages known as leaves take various forms that evolved independently in different groups of lower vascular plants. The simplest are scalelike emergences, or enations, that are not served by vascular tissue (i.e., they have no veins), found in some extinct groups and in modern whisk ferns (Psilotum). The lycophytes have scalelike, needlelike, or awl-shaped “microphylls” with a single, unbranched vein. The sphenophytes have “sphenophylls”—scalelike leaves with a single vein in the modern Equisetum or wedge-shaped leaves with a dichotomously forking vein system in many of the fossil forms. These leaf forms are all so simple that the vascular connection with the stem stele does not affect the stele configuration and causes no leaf gap. On the other hand, the complex leaves of ferns (pteridophylls, or megaphylls) probably evolved from a branching stem system and affect the stele by drawing out enough vascular tissue to cause a leaf gap.


The life cycle of pteridophytes exhibits an alternation of generations between gametophytes and sporophytes. The gametophytes are sexual plants producing eggs or sperm or both, and the sporophytes are asexual plants producing spores that are capable of producing new gametophytes. The sporophyte of lower vascular plants, in contrast to that of mosses and liverworts, is obviously the dominant generation. Unlike seed plants, which also have dominant sporophytes, pteridophytes reproduce not by forming seeds but by producing spores—minute single cells covered by a protective wall and readily carried by the wind. The life cycle of these plants is referred to as pteridophytic, or fernlike, as opposed to spermatophytic (seed-plant-like).

The plant begins life as a spore. The germinating spore grows into a small gametophyte, or prothallium, usually only 0.3 to 1 centimetre (0.2 to 0.4 inch) long or broad, bearing rhizoids (hairlike structures for water and mineral absorption and attachment to the soil). Gametophytes may be green, occurring on the soil surface, or colourless, occurring under the soil (usually saprophytically, with the aid of a mycorrhizal fungus). Sex organs, called antheridia and archegonia, produce sperm and eggs, respectively. The sperm require water in which to swim to the egg for fertilization. The fertilized egg, or zygote, contains one set of chromosomes from each of the two sex cells. The zygote then divides, developing into an embryo, which in turn develops the first leaf, root, and stem apex. The resulting plant, the sporophyte, is the characteristic plant that is normally seen. At maturity, sporangia (spore cases) are produced; in them the spore mother cells divide by a special nuclear division, meiosis, in which the chromosome number is reduced to a single set for each of four resulting spores.

In most pteridophytes all the spores of each plant are alike, and the plant is said to be homosporous. A few groups (the lycophytes Selaginella and Isoetes and, among the ferns, the water-fern families Marsileaceae, Salviniaceae, and Azollaceae) are heterosporous, forming two types of spores. These plants have two kinds of sporangia, one producing a few large megaspores (holding food reserves for the early development of the embryo) and the other producing many small microspores. The microspore divides to form a reduced gametophyte, merely a jacket of cells and a few sperm cells; the megaspore divides to form a mass of tissue and archegonia, each enclosing an egg.

The life cycle of the lower vascular plants is basically the same as that of seed plants. The main difference is that in seed plants the new young sporophyte (embryo) is kept within a structure (seed) on the parent plant before dispersal and perhaps a resting stage, whereas in lower vascular plants dispersal and resting take place in the spore before the embryo is formed.

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