With these advantages, plants increased in height and size. With these advantages, plants increased in height and size. They are considered the most advanced seedless vascular plants and display characteristics commonly observed in seed plants. Water is still required for fertilization of seedless vascular plants, and most favor a moist environment. By the late Devonian period, plants had evolved vascular tissue, well-defined leaves, and root systems. Modern-day seedless vascular plants include club mosses, horsetails, ferns, and whisk ferns. With their large fronds, ferns are the most readily recognizable seedless vascular plants. A pteridophyte is a vascular plant (with xylem and phloem) that disperses spores.Because pteridophytes produce neither flowers nor seeds, they are sometimes referred to as "cryptogams", meaning that their means of reproduction is hidden. There are approximately 20,000 different species of ferns. Seedless vascular plants: Club mosses, Spike Mosses, Quillworts (Phylum Lycophyta)Horsetails, Whisk Ferns, Ferns (Phylum Pterophyta) Gymnosperms (vascular, naked seeds) Conifers (Phylum Coniferophyta) Cycads (Phylum Cycadophyta) Ginkgos (Phylum … Ferns prefer moist, shady, woodland areas, but they are adaptable to a wide variety of environments including remote mountains, rocky cliffs, and tropical forest beds, and they can be found next to bodies of water or in open fields. Ferns and Other Seedless Vascular Plants. By the late Devonian period, plants had evolved vascular tissue, well-defined leaves, and root systems. The seedless vascular plants are intermediate in their structural and reproductive adaptations between the more “primitive” bryophytes and the “advanced” seed plants. Seedless vascular plants include ferns and horsetails. Such plants have proper roots, stems, and leaves. Seedless plants can be vascular, meaning they retain water in the tissue of the plant, or they can be nonvascular. We learned that the sporophyte is the dominant generation and that this diploid condition can provide plants with an advantage against the damaging effects of the sun. These plants do not have well-differentiated root, shoots and stems or water transport system so they thrive only in moist places. Ferns, horsetails (often treated as ferns), and lycophytes (clubmosses, spikemosses, and quillworts) are all pteridophytes. Ferns. More than 20,000 species of ferns live in … It is the most common of all seedless, vascular plants. Non-vascular plants include mosses, liverworts, and hornworts. In seedless vascular plants, the sporophyte became the dominant phase of the lifecycle. Ferns were used as a representative of seedless vascular plants to examine their life cycle. Club Mosses Fern, (class Polypodiopsida), class of nonflowering vascular plants that possess true roots, stems, and complex leaves and that reproduce by spores.The number of known extant fern species is about 10,500, but estimates have ranged as high as 15,000, the number varying because certain groups are as yet poorly studied and because new species are still being found in unexplored tropical areas. Ferns, horsetails (also called Indian puzzle plant) and club mosses are types of seedless vascular plants in that they have a root system and leaves that can hold water. Ferns and Other Seedless Vascular Plants.