Antheridium
The antheridium (plural: antheridia; from the Greek antheros = blooming) is a term from botany: It is the male gametangium (sexual organ) in cryptogamous plants such as mosses , ferns , moss plants and certain algae and fungi . In it, the mobile spermatozoids are formed, which then fertilize the egg cells in the female sexual organs, the archegonia or oogonia . In the case of land-living mosses, water is necessary for transfer to the archegonium. To do this, the spermatozoids can swim short distances in a drop of water to the archegonium, by which they are chemotactically attracted. In the case of dioecious plants, longer distances can be covered by hitting raindrops and thus spraying the spermatozoid-containing water onto the female plants. In the land-living moss and fern plants, the antheridia have an outer layer of sterile cells; the antheridia of aquatic algae lack this.
In the seed plants (Spermatophyta) the antheridium is reduced to the generative cell of the pollen grain . The ferns are very common, especially the worm fern with the antheridia.
literature
- Ulrich Lüttge , Manfred Kluge, Gabriela Bauer: Botany . Wiley-VCH, Weinheim 1994, ISBN 3-527-30031-7 .
- Hans Otto Schwantes: Biology of the mushrooms. An introduction to applied mycology (= university paperbacks . Volume 1871 ). Ulmer, Stuttgart 1996, ISBN 3-8252-1871-6 .