HABITAT USE

                              Permission granted by Michael Farabee        

Vascular, seedless plants require a moist environment in order to allow their sporophyte, or the diploid generation which produces spores, to develop and fertilize. They develop around damp forest floors, fresh water bodies, and beneath other plants. Since most of the seedless vascular plants are small in size, the amount of sunlight needed for survival is much less than vascular, seeded plants. The seedless, vascular plants were dominant during the period of the Carboniferous forests. During the Carboniferous era, seedless vascular plants were able to grow into trees and dominate much of the plant kingdom.  All of these larger plants have died out and only the smaller ones persist nowadays. 

       The seedless vascular plants are no longer dominant in plant environments, but they still have many more species and many more niches than their predecessors, the Bryophytes. The survival of these plants depend on enough nutrients in the soil and available water supplies in order to reproduce and grow. As more and more destruction of natural habitat occurs, through human causes, the existence of these plants will be threatened.