94 TYPES OF BRITISH PLANTS 
state of things. All produce seeds, that is, they form, by 
fertilisation, upon the plant itself, each within a little coat, 
small embryos, which, when they sprout, or germinate, 
grow into plants exactly like their parents. You well 
remember that the spores from moss-fruits or from the 
fronds of ferns developed into something quite unlike the 
generation that produced them. Further, these seeds 
are always produced by a double set of machinery, the 
machines being of different kinds, and each useless with- 
out the other.* 
One word of reminder where necessary. Although 
the seed method is the chief and the typical way of 
reproduction amongst flowering plants, remember that 
there is also, even here, a large amount of “vegetative 
reproduction.” (See Chapter V.). We have talked there 
about the shoots that run underground from the rasp- 
berry canes, of the buds of the Celandine, and so on, but 
in all but a few cases this is merely secondary, and we 
shall not trouble further with it in this chapter. 
In the lower forms we noticed that, generally speaking, 
any or every part of the plant might add to its other 
duties that of producing offspring, but at the close of the 
ferns we found certain examples of special parts of the 
plant being set aside for the office. The Royal Fern, for 
instance, only produced the spores at the top of the 
fronds, and the Moonwort and Adder’s Tongue showed a 
sharp separation of the frond into two distinct halves, 
of quite different shapes, on only one of which could 
* It is true that there seem at present to be genuine cases of an 
opposite kind, e.g. in a species of Bog Mercury, and in certain water 
plants, but these are so rare and eccentric that for the present they may 
be dismissed. It is just possible, though it must be confessed improbable, 
that fertilisation is really accomplished, although it has been impossible 
hitherto to discover the method. 
