sporophyll's Usage Examples:

Flora), the primitive leaf was a reproductive leaf, a sporophyll, from which the foliage-leaf was derived by progressive sterilization.

The sporangia of the Psilotaceae are associated in synangia, which occupy the same position relatively to the sporophyll, as the single sporangium of Lycopodium or the group of sporangia in Spenophyllum majus.

There is thus a considerable body of evidence to support Bowers view of the primitive nature of the sporophyll.

from sporophylls); that is, they are the result of descending metamorphosis.

The sporophylls may exceptionally undergo further dichotomies and bear more numerous synangia.

The spores, as in the heterosporous Pteridophyta, are of two kindsmicrospores (pollen grains) borne in microsporangia (pollen sacs) on special leaves (sporophylls) known as stamens, and macrospores (embryo-sac) borne in macrosporangia (ovules) on sporophylls known as carpels.

The recently discovered species, Sphenophyllum fertile, while resembling Bowmanites Romeri in its peltate, bisporangiate sporangiophores, is peculiar in the fact that both dorsal and ventral lobes of the sporophyll were fertile, dividing in a palmate manner into several branches, each of which constitutes a sporangiophore.

It consists of one or more carpels (megasporophylls), either separate (fig.

The cones, which in some instances at least were heterosporous, presented a general resemblance to those of Lycopodium and Selaginella, a single sporangium being situated on the upper surface of each sporophyll.

These, as in Gymnosperms, are of two kinds, microspores or pollen-grains, borne in the stamens (or microsporophylls) and megaspores, in which the egg-cell is developed, contained in the ovule, which is borne enclosed in the carpel (or megasporophyll).

As with few exceptions the stamen represents a leaf which has been specially developed to bear the pollen or microspores, it is spoken of in comparative morphology as a microsporophyll; similarly the carpels which make up the pistil are the megasporophylls (see Angiosperms).