Title: Life Cycle - in a nutshell - bryophyte
Headings: Life cycle
Life cycle
... life cycle in a nutshell.
Spore to protonema
The following stylized diagrams show some of the variations.
Further gametophyte growth
Some interesting links

Content: Bryophytes are examples of haploid-dominant organisms. The rest of this page is devoted mostly to the subject of gametophyte development, from spore through to the leafy or thallose stage. This page finishes with some interesting web links. There is a separate SPOROPHYTE DEVELOPMENT page. Spore to protonema
Germinating Funaria spore
Upon germination a spore typically produces a short, filamentous outgrowth called a germ tube. The photo shows a germinating spore of a moss in the genus Funaria. The spore is the brownish spherical object and a germ tube has grown out from it. The tube shown in this photo is already several cells long and you can also see many green, chlorophyll-filled chloroplasts, in which photosynthesis is carried out. The initial tube lengthens and branches and this photo shows the filamentous complexes that have developed from three Funaria spores. The early growth in many moss protonema consists of filamentous tubes with colourless walls and with the cross-walls between neighbouring cells being at right-angles to direction of the filament's long axis.