Hello, this is Frank with Frank's beautiful rocks and minerals. To see my collection of beautiful rocks and minerals which I have prospected from across the United States and other countries, type it on YouTube, rock and mineral identification followed by my name. Frank, Ryzer, Space, Capital M period, Capital S period. Ryzer is spelled R-E-I-S-E-R. I encourage you to watch my videos on geology and rock and mineral prospecting and get out there into the field yourself and prospect for some beautiful rocks and minerals. You can support my channel on Patreon so that I'm able to bring you more fascinating demonstrations and science. I'm Patreon, some believe type in my name. Frank, Ryzer, M period S period. And I appreciate your financial support. Today's demonstration is on biology. We're going to look at the beautiful moss plant. Mosses are herbaceous, they're not woody like trees. Small, delicate plants that grow in damp and... moist and damp and shady locations. Let's take a look at some moss. Here's some moss that I collected at the park today. You can see how delicate of a little plant it is. Let's look at it under the stereomicroscope. And here's the moss. Mosses are of the family briofaita, they're briofaits. They're small, nonvascular, non-woody or herbaceous, flowerless plants. Often, their leaves are only one cell thick. Mosses do not have seeds and after fertilization develops sporofaits with unbranched stalks, topped with single capsules containing spores which are going to look through the microscope in a minute. They're dense green, clumps and damp and shady locations. They have haploid, gemetophyte generation as the dominant phase of their life cycle. What does that mean? Haploid means having half of the chromosomes of an adult plant, which is deployed. And gemetophyte is the sexual self-forming body of a plant with alternation of generation as the life cycle. Alternation of generations is a plant that alternates between a sexual phase of its life cycle and an asexual phase. The sexual phase produces gametes, or sex cells, and the asexual phase produces spores and is known as the sporofite. Spores are bodies which develop into mature plants without needing to undergo fertilization as what is required during the sexual phase. Mosses absorb water and gases such as carbon dioxide for photosynthesis and release oxygen from photosynthesis to the outer cells of their leaves. Mosses do not have roots, but have instead something called rhizoids, which anchor them to the ground. Unlike roots, rhizoids do not absorb water or nutrients. The spore-forming sporofite, for example, the diploid multisighted generation, are short-lived and dependent on the gemetophyte for water supply and nutrition. Let's look at the beautiful moss plant under high power. This is high power under the stereomicroscope. We still, even at high power, cannot discern the leaves. We can sort of see the leaves, and we see some of the sporofites, which are the brown tips. There's a sporofite. There are some leaves. We can just make out the leaves. Let's look at the mature sporofite body under the microscope. The biological microscope magnifies to a greater degree. It is under greater magnification that we could actually see the spores in the sporofite. And here it is. This is a mature sporofite. But we don't see the spores yet. This is the body. And here are the spores. Now we will zoom in under high magnification to observe the spores. We're right now at 430 times. I mean, we're at 100 times. Now we're at 430 times. And we can just make out the spores. And we can just make out the spores. There are the spores. The asexual spores, which grow individually each little time spore there, that you can still barely see under high magnification, will grow into a mature moss plant. In the gameteo fight stage, the gamete actually waits on the gameteo fight plant until rain, because it is in rain that the gameteo fight releases a gamete, and the gamete swims over to a sporofite, which what we are observing under the microscope right now is from. The gamete will then, in the sexual stage, unite with the haploid sporofite and produce a diploid spore. Let's look at it under the low power and get a gist of the rest of the sporofite. And here we see the rest of the body. We can see the cells if we switch back to high power. And there are the cells. There we can see the cells that are attached to the end of the plant. Each cell releases oxygen from the process of photosynthesis into the surrounding atmosphere, and absorbs carbon dioxide from the atmosphere for the process of photosynthesis. The water is also taken into the plant. And this is Frank with Frank's beautiful rocks and minerals. Always reminding you in order to find those beautiful rocks and minerals to keep looking down.