from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
- n. Any of various vascular plants that reproduce by means of spores rather than by seeds, including the ferns and related plants, such as club mosses and horsetails.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
- n. Any simple vascular plant that produces spores, but not seeds, and has the diploid stage of its life cycle as the dominant form.
from The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. One of the Pteridophyta.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- n. plants having vascular tissue and reproducing by spores
There are 794 angiosperm genera, 77% of China's total angiosperm species, 24 gymnosperm, 70 pteridophyte and 102 bryophyte genera.
A total of 859 vascular plant, 15 pteridophyte, 21 bryophyte and 159 algal species have been recorded.
Instead of the great extinction event we observe an increase in the diversity of pteridophyte spores.