Flowerless plants with leaves bearing spores that give rise to tiny sexual prothalli, which produce fern plantlets.
Vascular, nonflowering plants, which do not produce fruit or seed and instead reproduce by spores.
Major clade of vascular plants, composed of plants lacking flowers and seeds but instead having simple or complex leaves that bear spores, which germinate to produce sexual plants (usually minute) that produce male and female gametes and produce fernlings after fertilisation.
Any member of the major subgroup of the pteridophytes, plants with well developed stems containing conducting tissues, but lacking the seeds which characterize the gymnosperms and flowering plants. The visible fern plant is asexual, producing minute spores from small patches (sort) on its fronds: the spores germinate in cool, moist places to produce tiny plantlets (the gametophytes) that bear male and female organs, fertilization requiring water droplets.