Re:Jargon and plant terms

[kyle at onebox_com]

How do you get to these so fast Tom?  Both the question and your
response are in the same digest!  

Anyway, Tom did a great job here so I'll just chime in on a couple
points.

If you wonder about any plants in particular that Tom didn't name let
us know and one of us on the list can tell you what group it belongs to.  Keep in mind that a couple other kinds of plants are grown in 
aquaria that don't fit any of the groups you named.  
For example:
Ferns are vascular plants (they have veins in their leaves) that never
produce seeds but instead by microscopic spores (I'm trying to
simplify here, technically seeds and spores aren't directly comparable
but don't worry about it).  A few common examples are
Water Sprite (Ceratopteris)
Glossostigma
Bulbitis
Marselia
Java Fern 
Isoetes (sort of, not truly a fern but the differences are highly
technical and not worth getting concerned over)

Mosses and Liverworts are another group of plants that don't fit into
the groups you asked about.  Like ferns they reproduce by spores, but
they have no vascular tissue (a major reason they stay small).  They
are the most primative group of plants (not counting algae).  The
ones you will come across most are
Java moss
Christmas moss
Willow moss
Riccia (Liverwort)
Ricciocarpos (Liverwort)
 
> What do these words mean?

>Gymnosperm =>Naked seed
>(Coniferophyta, Cycadophyta, Gnetophyta and Ginkgopyta) Pine trees, >cypress,
>Redwoods and Sequoia, Cycads(Dioon), and the Ginkgo tree.

More specifically it means that no fruit forms around the seed 
(therefore naked as in not hidden in fruit) and 
flowers are never produced by these plants, only cones.


> "Plant is a noncotyledonous" ?

>No cotyledons. Everything but Monocots of Dicots.
>Test next Thursday:)

Not exactly true.  An old term for gymnosperms is "polycots" meaning many cotyledons.  The seeds have lots of little leaves on the embryo before it sprouts instead of 1 or 2.  Non-seed plants have no 
cotyledons of course because they have no seeds!  A few weird monocots
and dicots actually have no cotyledons (lost during evolution).
Can't think of any of them for sure offhand but I think parasitic
plants sometimes lack them and orchids may as well.  Actually I can
think of one aquatic plant that lacks cotyledons (correct me if I am
wrong Tom), Podostemum (it has a bizarre reproductive system all 
around but is actually a dicot).


Sincerely,

Kyle