ABSTRACT
According to M. Mogie, automixis also occurs in lower plants: algae, fungi, bryophytes, as well as pteridophytes. He defines automixis as a process giving rise to an individual from products of a single meiotically dividing cell. According to E. A. Gaumann, apomixis in fungi means vegetative development of sexual cells in the absence of fertilization. He discerns two types of apomixis: parthenogenesis, the apomictic development of haploid cells, and apogamy, the apomictic development of diploid cells. In bryophytes, the zygote resulting from gamete union grows into a sporophyte, which remains attached to the gametophyte. Often sexual reproduction is rare or absent in dioecious species where only one sex occurs in a locality. In the case of apospory, the gametophyte is formed from vegetative cells in the sporangium or by spores that are unreduced due to formation of restitution nuclei. For instance, gametophytes with the unreduced chromosome number, produced by apogamy, may have given rise to "tetraploid" sporophytes.
