Distinguishing Features of Club Mosses and Ferns

Seedless Vascular Plants

• Club mosses and ferns are seedless vascular plants that belong to two different taxonomic divisions. Clinton Community College identifies seedless vascular plants as those that spread by means of airborne spores, have an independent sporophyte and gametophyte, and as vascular plants have true roots, leaves and stems. The sperm of seedless vascular plants, which also include horsetails and whisk ferns, are flagellated and require a moist environment for reproduction.

Club Mosses

• Club mosses are seedless vascular specimens found throughout the world's moist, shaded woodlands that consist of five Genera in the Division Lycophyta. The Illinois State Museum notes that there are 1,100 species of club moss in existence, a number greatly reduced from the diversity suggested by the fossil record of these plants. Green or blue-green in color, club mosses are distinguished by their upright and horizontal branching stems, which grow above and below the ground, an epiphytic nature, in most species, and by highly flammable spores that terminate in cone-like structures at the stem's end, according to Clinton Community College.

Microphylls vs. Megaphylls

• Perhaps the most distinguishing feature of club mosses is the presence of a microphylls rather than a megaphylls, which is present in fern plants. The Illinois State Museum notes that Lycophytes have tiny, narrow leaves with a single strand of vascular tissue, or vein, while ferns and other vascular plants have larger leaves with multiple, interwoven veins.

Ferns

• The Illinois State Museum notes that club mosses are among the fern allies that most resemble true fern plants, but ferns have their own distinguishing features. Ferns belong to the Division Pterophyta, and most feature a stem (called a stipe) that grows horizontally underground, to create a structure known botanically as a rhizome, while the leaf (called a frond) grows above the soil's surface. Ohio State University notes that the manner in which new fern foliage emerges is a distinguishing feature of the Pterophyta, because new fronds unroll in a fashion that has earned them the name fiddleheads.