206 LIFE STORIES OF PLANTS 
Pick a leaf which has these on it, when the brown 
dots look shiny. Place it on a piece of white paper in 
a dry room. In a few minutes or an hour you may 
perhaps see a sprinkling of tiny dust-like bodies on the 
white paper. You can brush them off with your hand. 
What are they? They are what we call spores. There 
is a hard brown wall, and in- 
i 
Sg Jé side a bit of living fern sub- 
N Yoon , stance. ‘These spores come out 
‘A aN, , of a great many spore cases 
Wy VV which are packed together in 
VW Wy Vv the fruit dots. So these dark 
6 | bodies on the underside of the 
leaf, instead of being insects 
which are harmful to plants, 
are fruit dots with spore cases 
and spores in them. 
It the fern plant is making so many of these tiny 
spores, each containing a little bit of living fern sub- 
stance, we would better not scrape them off, for they 
must be for some good purpose in the life of the fern. 
If you examine a bracken fern, maidenhair fern, and 
some other kinds, you will find that the fruit dots are 
of different shapes, and that some of them are under a 
flap at the edge of the leaf. | | 
Does the fern plant have flowers? The fern plant 
does not have flowers as the flowering plants do. Nor 
Fic. 250. Film fern. 
