liverwort

Liverworts belong to a group of plants, called the Bryophyta, which also includes the mosses. Neither mosses nor liverworts possess true roots and both require water to enable the male gametes to swim to the female sex organs to fertilize the eggs. Unlike mosses most liverworts have no, or only very frail, leaves.

Nonvascular plant (with no ‘veins’ to carry water and food), related to hornworts and mosses; it is found growing in damp places. (Class Hepaticae, order Bryophyta.)

The plant exists in two different reproductive forms, sexual and asexual, which appear alternately (see alternation of generations). The main sexual form consists of a plant body, or thallus, which may be flat, green, and lobed like a small leaf, or leafy and mosslike. The asexual, spore-bearing form is smaller, typically parasitic on the thallus, and produces a capsule from which spores are scattered.

First land plants