CRYPTOGAMS.—PHANEROGAMS. 11 
trees ; while at the present day in the tropics and warmer parts 
of the earth Ferns will frequently attain the height of twenty 
feet (fig. 15), and sometimes even as much as forty feet, bearing 
on their summit a large tuft of leaves, or, as they are commonly 
called, fronds, a term applied to leaves which, like those of 
Ferns, bear their fructification or organs of reproduction. In 
these plants true roots first also appear, but they are generally 
broken up into numerous small fibres and never become en- 
larged as in the tap-roots (jig. 20, r), of the higher flowering 
plants. 
Cryptogamous Plants or Cryptogams.—In all the plants above 
- mentioned we have no evident flowers as in the higher plants, 
hence they are called Flowerless ; but their organs uf reproduc- 
tion are very small and inconspicuous, and therefore they are 
also termed Cryptogamous, that is to say, plants with concealed 
or invisible reproductive organs. These Cryptogamous plants, 
or Cryptogams as they are commonly termed, are again divided 
into two groups, called Cormophytes and Thallophytes ; the latter 
comprising the simpler forms of plants, which, as previously 
noticed, are commonly known as Algz, Fungi, and Lichens, 
and which present no distinction of root, stem, and leaf (figs. 5 
and 6); and the former group those plants, such as the Liver- 
worts (figs. 7 and 8), Mosses ( figs. 9 and 10), Club-mosses (jig. 
12), Selaginellas, Pepperworts, Horsetails (fig. 13), and Ferns 
(figs. 14 and 15), which present us with an evident stem, bearing 
leaves, and also, except in the Liverworts and Mosses, true roots 
and vessels of different kinds. 
Phanerogamous Plants or Phanerogams.—All plants above 
the Cryptogams, from possessing evident flowers or reproductive 
organs, are termed Phanerogamous, Phanerogams, or Flowering. 
These latter plants are also reproduced by true seeds instead of 
spores, as is the case in all Cryptogams which possess reproduc- 
tive organs ; a seed being essentially distinguished from a spore, 
from containing within itself in a rudimentary condition all the 
essential parts of the future plant in the form of an embryo 
(fig. 16); while a spore merely consists of a single cell, or of 
two or more united, and never exhibits any distinction of parts 
until it begins to develop in the ordinary process of vegetation, 
and then only in certain cases. 
These Phanerogams also present two well-marked divisions, 
called respectively the Angiospermia and Gymnospermia: the 
former including those plants in which the ovules are enclosed 
in a case called an ovary (jig. 33, 0, 0); and the latter, such 
plants as the Fir and Larch, in which the ovules are naked 
(fig. 17, ov) or not enclosed in an ovary. In the Phanerogams 
we have the highest and most perfect condition of vegetation, 
and it is to these that our attention will be more especially 
directed in the following pages. But before proceeding to 
describe in detail the elementary structures of these and other 
