Flowerless Plants

Given the choice in a contest between a beautiful flowering plant and a flowerless plant, it would hardly surprise anyone that the flowering plant would win. Everyone loves flowers and rightly so. What’s not love about something lovely and fragrant?

The lowly and under appreciated flowerless plant, however, has an unsung magnificence that surpasses the most exquisite flowers ever to be seen by human eyes. Moreover, flowerless plants are often thought of as ugly, and even special effort is given to banishing them from our lives. Poignant, but true, we can live without the beloved and delightful flowering plants, but not without certain flowerless ones.

If you wanted to get to know all of the kinds of flowerless plants, it would take you a long time, for there are well over one hundred thousand species known. It may surprise you to know that every living breathing thing on earth (including clueless humans) could not exist without flowerless plants. They are more important than any crop, or any tree.

Among the great groups of flowerless plants are algae, the most important of them being marine algae. Flowerless plants not only lack flowers, but they also lack other structures familiar to us, such as fruits sand seeds. Since seeds are used for reproduction by the plants that produce them, scientists were puzzled for a long time as to how plants without flower or seeds managed to reproduce themselves.

Actually, the flowerless plants have many different methods of reproduction, ranging from the simple trick of growing for a while and then splitting in half (as do bacteria and some one-celled algae) to very complicated methods (as in ferns). Many algae produce eggs which have to be fertilized by sperms that swim through the water to reach them.

Most of the smaller algae, unfortunately, have very long names. One of the common little green ones, which darts about in pond water is called Chlamydomonas, which means a little individual wearing a cloak.

A close relative, often found swimming in rain water pools, is bright red. This second alga is quite at home in cold climates, and occurs in mountains and in the Arctic in countless millions to cause the famous red snow.

One of the most beautiful swimming algae is Volvox, a perfect sphere the size of a pin head, which gleams like a gem as it rolls about in sunny pools, its thousands of tiny whips beating the water like living oars.

Some of the threadlike algae also show sings of restlessness. The blue green filaments of Oscillatoria recieved this name because they continually wave and sway from side to side.

In seed plants, the chloroplasts (the structures that contain chlorophyll) are all small and of the same shape. Among some kinds of algae, the chloroplasts are large and of fantastic shapes. For example: The slippery green threads of Spirogyra have beautiful spiral chloroplasts. Meanwhile, in Zygnema, the chloroplasts look like green stars.

Among the most important algae are the tiny diatoms, each protected by two tightly fitting, transparent glassy shells. Diatoms, are the most important of all sources of food for the animal life of the oceans.

Seaweeds are the best known of the algae. All algae contain the life giving chlorophyll, but many of the seaweeds have other coloring material in their cells which hides the chlorophyll.

The result is that you can find seaweeds of many hues, from light green sea lettuce, each plant of which bears a faint resemblance to a lettuce leaf, to the brown gulf weed of the Sargasso Sea.

Some seaweeds are olive-green, some almost black, and far below the surface in the dim light several hundred feet down there are red, purple, and violet plants.

Seaweeds grow in many different shapes. Some of them look curiously like land plants to which they are not at all related. Caulerpa, with its delicate green branches, looks like moss. Another moss-like Dasya, is a rich red. The sea palm, form one to two feet high, looks like an asparagus plant.

Another, the Halicystis, might be called the sea mushroom, because it grows in groups that resemble mushrooms. Then, bobbing up and down in the waves near tropical beaches we find little spheres an inch in diameter, glistening like green Christmas-tree ornaments. Each globe is an entire seaweed.

Another, the gulf weed, looks like some land plant whose fruits are berries. These "berries" are not fruits, however, but little air bladders that keep the plant afloat.

The kelps are the giants among the seaweeds. A number of species grow along the Atlantic and Pacific coasts. Kelp also grow luxuriantly off the coast of Japan. The largest kelp, which may reach over two hundred feet, grow in cool waters.

Another, the Devil's Apron is a brown kelp with a coarse, tattered blade spreading out from a short stalk. Still another strange seaweed is the Devil's Shoelace. A mass of these plants, an inch in diameter and twice as tall as a man, might well suggest sea serpents as the waves make them writhe and twist.

Algae supply food for human beings as well as for sea animals. In the Far East and the islands of the Pacific, a floury product that looks like spaghetti, noodles or tapioca is made from seaweed.

Other seaweed products are the transparent vermicelli used in Chinese soups, sea lettuce used as salad and a kelp. Laminaria potatorum that can be French fried like potato chips.

The red alga Porphyrais cultivated in Japan and great quantities are used in soup and served with rice. Porphyra is eaten in many countries.In England it is called "laver," in Ireland "sloke", and in Scotland "slack." It is said to be delicious when boiled and seasoned with lemon juice.

Several algae, the best know of which is Irish moss (Chondrus), supply jelly that can be turned into delicious desserts by adding fruit flavorings. Mixed with bean paste, various seaweeds are used to make sweetmeats. In some parts of eastern Canada, seaweed is dried and eaten. There, seaweed is called "dulse."

The Greatest Thing To Know Of All About Algae?

Nearly all marine algae are single celled photosynthetic algae. This is huge! Why? Because marine algae is the single most important organism on the planet -- for one reason -- seventy to eighty percent of all the oxygen we breathe comes from them. Without them we cannot exist.