Crossword clues for cryptogam
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Cryptogam \Cryp"to*gam\ (kr?p"t?-g?m), n. [Cf. F. cryptogame.
See Cryptogamia.] (Bot.)
A plant belonging to the Cryptogamia.
--Henslow.
[1913 Webster] ||
Wiktionary
n. Any plant that reproduces using spores (rather than seeds), formerly placed in the taxonomic group Cryptogamae, which included ferns, mosses, algae, fungus, lichens and liverworts.
WordNet
n. formerly recognized taxonomic group including all flowerless and seedless plants that reproduce by means of spores: ferns, mosses, algae, fungi
Wikipedia
A cryptogam ( scientific name Cryptogamae) is a plant (in the wide sense of the word) that reproduces by spores, without flowers or seeds. "Cryptogamae" ( Greek , "hidden" + , , "to marry") means hidden reproduction, referring to the fact that no seed is produced, thus cryptogams represent the non-seed bearing plants. Other names, such as " thallophytes", " lower plants", and "spore plants" are also occasionally used. As a group, Cryptogamae are the opposite of the Phanerogamae (Greek , = "visible") or Spermatophyta (Greek , = "seed" and , = "plant"), the seed plants. The best known groups of cryptogams are algae, lichens, mosses and ferns, but it also includes non-photosynthetic organisms traditionally classified as plants, such as fungi, slime molds, and bacteria. The classification is now deprecated in Linnaean taxonomy.
At one time, the cryptogams were formally recognised as a group within the plant kingdom. In his system for classification of all known plants and animals, Carl Linnaeus (1707–1778) divided the plant kingdom into 24 classes, one of which was the "Cryptogamia". This included all plants with concealed reproductive organs. He divided Cryptogamia into four orders: Algae, Musci ( bryophytes), Filices ( ferns), and Fungi.
Not all cryptogams are treated as part of the plant kingdom; the fungi, in particular, are regarded as a separate kingdom, more closely related to animals than plants, while blue-green algae are now regarded as a phylum of bacteria. Therefore, in contemporary plant systematics, "Cryptogamae" is not a taxonomically coherent group, but is cladistically polyphyletic. However, all organisms known as cryptogams belong to the field traditionally studied by botanists and the names of all cryptogams are regulated by the International Code of Nomenclature for algae, fungi, and plants.
During World War II, the Government Code and Cypher School recruited Geoffrey Tandy, a marine biologist expert in cryptogams, to Station X, Bletchley Park when someone confused these with cryptograms.
Usage examples of "cryptogam".
Conditions necessary for these movements--List of Genera and Families, which include sleeping plants--Description of the movements in the several Genera--Oxalis: leaflets folded at night--Averrhoa: rapid movements of the leaflets--Porlieria: leaflets close when plant kept very dry--Tropaeolum: leaves do not sleep unless well illuminated during day--Lupinus: various modes of sleeping--Melilotus: singular movements of terminal leaflet--Trifolium--Desmodium: rudimentary lateral leaflets, movements of, not developed on young plants, state of their pulvini--Cassia: complex movements of the leaflets--Bauhinia: leaves folded at night--Mimosa pudica: compounded movements of leaves, effect of darkness--Mimosa albida, reduced leaflets of--Schrankia: downward movement of the pinnae--Marsilea: the only cryptogam known to sleep--Concluding remarks and summary--Nyctitropism consists of modified circumnutation, regulated by the alternations of light and darkness--Shape of first true leaves.
Any one who will consider this list will see that the young plants selected for observation, fairly represent the whole vegetable series excepting the lowest cryptogams, and the movements of some of the latter when mature will hereafter be described.
Dicotyledons and amongst Monocotyledons, together with several Cryptogams, have now been described.
As in cryptogams, the ferns of Earth, two forms are alternating mature phases of a complex life cycle.
The gray-brown surface was already covered with miniature black stacks of cryptogams, the dry microscopic plants that held the desert soil together.
When I come back from it I shall publish such papers on the cryptogams of Kamschatka that no one will ever set the mark of intelligence upon my head again.
He had dealt with the coleoptera and he was deep in the vascular cryptogams before the frigate turned her head north at last.
It reproduced like the vegetable cryptogams, especially the Pteridophyta, having spore cases at the tips of the wings and evidently developing from a thallus or prothallus.
But by far the most important point in the list, is that we meet with sleeping plants in 28 families, in all the great divisions of the Phanerogamic series, and in one Cryptogam.
It reproduced like the vegetable cryptogams, especially the Pteridophyta, having spore cases at the tips of the wings and evidently developing from a thallus or prothallus.
Conditions necessary for these movements--List of Genera and Families, which include sleeping plants--Description of the movements in the several Genera--Oxalis: leaflets folded at night--Averrhoa: rapid movements of the leaflets--Porlieria: leaflets close when plant kept very dry--Tropaeolum: leaves do not sleep unless well illuminated during day--Lupinus: various modes of sleeping--Melilotus: singular movements of terminal leaflet--Trifolium--Desmodium: rudimentary lateral leaflets, movements of, not developed on young plants, state of their pulvini--Cassia: complex movements of the leaflets--Bauhinia: leaves folded at night--Mimosa pudica: compounded movements of leaves, effect of darkness--Mimosa albida, reduced leaflets of--Schrankia: downward movement of the pinnae--Marsilea: the only cryptogam known to sleep--Concluding remarks and summary--Nyctitropism consists of modified circumnutation, regulated by the alternations of light and darkness--Shape of first true leaves.
Dicotyledons and amongst Monocotyledons, together with several Cryptogams, have now been described.
We were just having a little chat about the higher cryptogams, that's all.
When I come back from it I shall publish such papers on the cryptogams of Kamschatka that no one will ever set the mark of intelligence upon my head again.
Jack was taken up with sailing his ship and Stephen, quite apart from the preservation, classification and description of his Tristan da Cunha specimens, the rich harvest of extreme activity in a cruelly limited time on the lower parts of that scientifically unknown island, inhabited by numbers of nondescript cryptogams, probably several flowering plants (though this was the wrong season for them), a quantity of beetles and other insects, some spiders, and at least two peculiar birds, a finch and a thrush, and quite apart from his Malay, had his sick-berth to look after.