Comparative Chlorophyll Content of the Two Generations of Bryophytes

Abstract

THE occurrence of chlorophyll in the sporophyte of Bryophytes has been noted by a number of investigators. Bold^1,2 has reviewed the older literature, and, by cytological studies on living material, has demonstrated chloroplasts and starch grains in the foot, seta and capsule of a number of species of both liverworts and mosses. In the liverwort, Riella americana, “as the sporange approaches maturity, its color is much more deeply green than is that of the gametophyte”³. Douin⁴ has examined the pigments of gametophytes of forty species of mosses belonging to twenty-eight genera, finding that all of them contain chlorophylls a and b, as in higher plants. In a comparative study of the sporophyte and gametophyte of five species of mosses, no qualitative differences in chlorophylls a and b or carotenoids were found⁵.