CHAPTER XIX 

 FLOWERLESS PLANTS. 



A BRIEF study should be made of the commoner and typi- 

 cal flowerless plants. Most plant species belong to this class, 

 yet, on account of their generally small size and inconspicu- 

 ous appearance, they are far less noticed by the average 

 observer than the more showy flovsrering plants, such as 

 "flowers," grasses, weeds, and trees. 



It is impossible to teach children the detailed differences 

 between flowering and flowerless plants. This essential dif- 

 erence, however, should be brought out, that the former 

 generally have conspicuous flowers — seed-forming organs, 

 while the latter reproduce more prominently by means of 

 cells, called spores, which are not formed like seeds. The 

 advanced botanical student, however, knows that there is a 

 less conspicuous process of reproduction in the flowerless 

 plants which is essentially the same as seed formation in 

 higher plants. 



Ferns are the largest common flowerless plants, and there 

 is a great and beautiful variety of them, brakes, spleenworts, 

 shield ferns, maidenhair, polypody, etc. It is a pleasant 

 thing to collect and study ferns in their native haunts. Brakes 

 and maidenhair ferns flourish abundantly on rich, wooded 

 hill-slopes. With their great fronds the brakes add a trop- 

 ical effect to our northern woods. The beautifully curled 



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