Ferns Have Spores

Today we learned about Pterophyta phylum. Pterophyta means winged plant. Think of a pterodactyl which is a dinosaur with wings. These plants have leaves which look like wings or feathers. These are different from other plants we've studied because they have spores instead of seeds.

Spores have a baby plant in a container but they are different from a seed because they don't have any food for the baby plant. That makes them very small, much smaller than a seed. I learned that a seed is a container with food AND a baby plant inside of it.

You find spores under the leaves of ferns. Leaves on ferns are called fronds.

There aren't any ferns around our house but we went to a close-by plant store called a nursery to see ferns. Here are some photos we took of our visit:


Ferns grow in a circle like this one.























Here you can see the spores under the leaves around the edges.