botany Botany, also called plant science, is the branch of natural science and biology studying plants, especially Plant anatomy, their anatomy, Plant taxonomy, taxonomy, and Plant ecology, ecology. A botanist or plant scientist is a scientist who s ...

, a sporophyll is a

leaf A leaf (: leaves) is a principal appendage of the plant stem, stem of a vascular plant, usually borne laterally above ground and specialized for photosynthesis. Leaves are collectively called foliage, as in "autumn foliage", while the leav ...

that bears

sporangia A sporangium (from Late Latin, ; : sporangia) is an enclosure in which spores are formed. It can be composed of a unicellular organism, single cell or can be multicellular organism, multicellular. Virtually all plants, fungus, fungi, and many ot ...

. Both

microphylls and megaphylls In plant anatomy and evolution a microphyll (or lycophyll) is a type of plant leaf with one single, unbranched leaf vein. Plants with microphyll leaves occur early in the fossil record, and few such plants exist today. In the classical concept of ...

can be sporophylls. In

heterosporous Heterospory is the production of spores of two different sizes and sexes by the sporophytes of land plants. The smaller of these, the microspore, is male and the larger megaspore is female. Heterospory evolved during the Devonian period from is ...

plants, sporophylls (whether they are microphylls or megaphylls) bear either megasporangia and thus are called megasporophylls, or

microsporangia A microsporangium () is a sporangium that produces microspores that give rise to male gametophytes when they germinate. Microsporangia occur in all vascular plants that have heterosporic life cycles, such as seed plants, spike mosses and the a ...

and are called microsporophylls. The overlap of the prefixes and roots makes these terms a particularly confusing subset of botanical nomenclature. Sporophylls vary greatly in appearance and structure, and may or may not look similar to sterile leaves. Plants that produce sporophylls include: '' Alaria esculenta'', a brown alga which shows sporophylls attached near the base of the alga.Dickson, Carola I. 1963. ''British Seaweeds''. The Kew Series.

Lycophyte The lycophytes, when broadly circumscribed, are a group of vascular plants that include the clubmosses. They are sometimes placed in a division Lycopodiophyta or Lycophyta or in a subdivision Lycopodiophytina. They are one of the oldest lineag ...

s, where sporophylls may be aggregated into

strobili A strobilus (: strobili) is a structure present on many land plant species consisting of sporangia-bearing structures densely aggregated along a stem. Strobili are often called cones, but some botanists restrict the use of the term cone to the woo ...

(''Selaginella'' and some ''Lycopodium'' and related genera) or distributed singly among sterile leaves (''

Huperzia ''Huperzia'' is a genus of lycophyte plants, sometimes known as the firmosses or fir clubmosses; the ''Flora of North America'' calls them gemma fir-mosses. This genus was originally included in the related genus ''Lycopodium'', from which it dif ...

''). Sporangia are borne in the axil or on the adaxial surface of the sporophyll. In heterosporous members, megasporophylls and microsporophylls may be intermixed or separated in a variety of patterns.

Fern The ferns (Polypodiopsida or Polypodiophyta) are a group of vascular plants (plants with xylem and phloem) that reproduce via spores and have neither seeds nor flowers. They differ from mosses by being vascular, i.e., having specialized tissue ...

s, which may produce sporophylls that are similar to sterile fronds or that appear very different from sterile fronds. These may be non-photosynthetic and lack typical pinnae, e.g. ''

Onoclea sensibilis ''Onoclea sensibilis'', the sensitive fern, also known as the bead fern, is a coarse-textured, medium to large-sized deciduous perennial plant, perennial fern. The name comes from its sensitivity to frost, the fronds dying quickly when first touc ...

''.

Cycad Cycads are seed plants that typically have a stout and woody (ligneous) trunk (botany), trunk with a crown (botany), crown of large, hard, stiff, evergreen and (usually) pinnate leaves. The species are dioecious, that is, individual plants o ...

s produce strobili, both pollen-producing and seed-producing, that are composed of sporophylls. ''

Ginkgo ''Ginkgo'' is a genus of non-flowering seed plants, assigned to the gymnosperms. The scientific name is also used as the English common name. The order to which the genus belongs, Ginkgoales, first appeared in the Permian, , and ''Ginkgo'' is n ...

'' produces microsporophylls aggregated into a pollen strobilus. Ovules are not born on sporophylls .

Gymnosperm The gymnosperms ( ; ) are a group of woody, perennial Seed plant, seed-producing plants, typically lacking the protective outer covering which surrounds the seeds in flowering plants, that include Pinophyta, conifers, cycads, Ginkgo, and gnetoph ...

s, like ''Ginkgo'' and cycads, produce microsporophylls, aggregated into pollen strobili. However, unlike these other groups, ovules are produced on cone scales, which are modified shoots rather than sporophylls. Some plants do not produce sporophylls. Sporangia are produced directly on stems. ''

Psilotum ''Psilotum'' is a genus of fern-like vascular plants. It is one of two genera in the family Psilotaceae commonly known as whisk ferns, the other being ''Tmesipteris''. Plants in these two genera were once thought to be descended from the earlies ...

'' has been interpreted as producing sporangia (fused in a synangium) on the terminus of a stem. ''

Equisetum ''Equisetum'' (; horsetail) is the only living genus in Equisetaceae, a family of vascular plants that reproduce by spores rather than seeds. ''Equisetum'' is a "living fossil", the only living genus of the entire subclass Equisetidae, which ...

'' always produce strobili, but the structures bearing sporangia (sporangiophores) have been interpreted as modified stems. The sporangia, despite being recurved are interpreted as terminal.

Gnetophyte Gnetophyta () is a division of plants (alternatively considered the subclass Gnetidae or order Gnetales), grouped within the gymnosperms (which also includes conifers, cycads, and ginkgos), that consists of some 70 species across the three relict ...

s produce both compound pollen and seed strobili.

References

* C.Michael Hogan. 2010
''Fern''. Encyclopedia of Earth. National council for Science and the Environment
Washington, DC Plant morphology Plant reproduction Leaves {{Reflist