Continuation. See No. 1, 2/2008

General tables on the taxonomy of plants and animals

Test "Higher spore plants"

Option 1: 1 – a; 2 - a; 3 - in; 4 - a; 5 - a.
Option 2: 1 – a; 2 - in; 3 - a; 4 - b; 5 - g.

Sample, cut cards

Conclusion

Seed plants have vegetative organs - ..., .... The embryo is protected from the adverse effects of the external environment, because. is in... . Fertilization does not depend on the presence of... . Coniferous plants belong to the department .... The most common plants on Earth are ...., ... ( Escape, roots, seed, water, Gymnosperms, Angiosperms.)

Evaluation Criteria

The maximum score is 52: less than 26 - "2", from 27 to 35 - "3", from 36 to 48 - "4", from 49 to 52 - "5"

Kingdom of Plants. higher seed plants

playing field

Target: generalization, deepening and consolidation of knowledge about the features of the structure, reproduction and significance of seed plants

Test "Higher seed plants"

Option 1: 1 - in; 2 - in; 3 - b; 4 - a; 5 - a.
Option 2: 1 – a; 2 - b; 3 - in; 4 - a; 5 - a.

Sample, cut cards

Evaluation Criteria

The maximum number of points is 98: less than 49 - "2", from 50 to 67 - "3", from 68 to 93 - "4", from 94 to 91 - "5"

Characteristics of the families of the department Angiosperms

playing field

Target: generalization, deepening and consolidation of knowledge about the families of the Angiosperms department, as well as the significance of these plants in human life

Conclusion

Angiosperms are divided into two classes. Characteristic features of monocots: ... root system, leaves with ... or ... venation, the number of parts in a flower is a multiple of .... Signs of dicots: ... root system, leaves with ... venation, the number of parts in a flower is a multiple of ... or .... ( Fibrous, parallel, arcuate, three, rod, reticulate, four, five.)

To be continued

Horsetails are characterized by the presence of shoots consisting of distinct segments (internodes) and nodes with whorled leaves. Horsetails belong to herbaceous plants with stems ranging in length from a few centimeters to several meters. Tree-like forms, reaching a height of 15 m and a diameter of more than 0.5 m, died out.

A characteristic feature of horsetails is the presence of peculiar sporangial-bearing structures - sporangiophores. The vast majority of horsetails are equisporous plants.

reproduction

Sexual generation - gametophyte (growth). The gametophytes produce antheridia and archegonia. In antheridia, polyflagellated spermatozoa develop, and in archegonia, eggs. Fertilization takes place in the presence of drip-liquid water, and a sporophyte grows from the zygote without a dormant period.

Classification

Of the horsetails, there is now one class of horsetails (or equisetopsids). Of the horsetail family, the horsetail genus is the most common. Horsetails often make up a significant percentage of grassland in grasslands and wetlands; widespread in acidic soil. The genus unites about 30 species; 4 are common in our country, 9 in Ukraine. Most often, we have horsetail, meadow horsetail, marsh horsetail, marsh horsetail and forest horsetail.

horsetail

Herbaceous plant with annual above-ground shoots. A small number of species are evergreen. The size of horsetail stems varies greatly: there are dwarf plants with a stem 5–15 cm high and 0.5–1 mm in diameter, and plants with a stem several meters long (in polychaete horsetail, the stem reaches a length of 9 m). Horsetails of tropical forests reach a height of 12 m. The underground part is a rhizome, creeping, branched, in which nutrients can be deposited (tubers are formed) and which serves as an organ of vegetative reproduction. Above-ground shoots grow at the top. Summer shoots are vegetative, branched, assimilating, composed of segments, with well-developed internodes. Whorled and also dissected branches branch off from the nodes. The leaves are inconspicuous, grow together into serrated sheaths, which dress the lower part of the internode. Silica is often deposited in the epidermal cells of the stem, so horsetails are poor food.

Spring shoots are spore-bearing, non-assimilating, unbranched, spore-bearing spikelets are formed on their top. After the spores mature, the shoots die off. Spores are spherical, with four springy ribbons, greenish, germinate into growths, unisexual - male or female. There are cases when antheridia and archegonia grow on the same growth. From a fertilized egg, a pregrowth grows, and then an adult horsetail.

Horsetail is a perennial plant. It hibernates as a rhizome deep in the soil. In early spring, you can see the fruiting stems of horsetail in the fields, along roads, in vegetable gardens, on railway embankments, they are popularly called pestles.
Stems are not branched, 7-25 cm tall.

Juicy, light brown or reddish-brown, horsetail stems end at the top with a spore-bearing pistil - a spikelet with spores. After the spores are scattered, the stems die off.
After the pistils, the leaves later develop in a fruitless way. In horsetail they are unbranched at the top (rarely you can see branching on the lower branches), 4-5-sided, without a cavity inside, bright green and very hard. Teeth, stem sheaths are characteristic: triangular-lanceolate, sharp, black-brown, fused in 2-3. The branches are directed obliquely upwards. As my grandmother used to say, it raises branches to the sun.
Distributed throughout Russia, grows on sandy soil. It is an indicator of acidified soils.
You can go to the collection of green shoots of horsetail in the summer. Cut them off at a height of 5 cm and
it is very important when collecting field horsetail to carefully look at the branches so as not to accidentally take other types of horsetail. They can be harmful to health. Therefore, I paid a lot of attention in this article to the botanical signs of horsetail. The following case was very indicative.
Sometime in 1995, a friend invited me to consult her mother about herbal treatment. The woman suffered from pancreatic cancer in the last stage. My visit was purely psychological in nature: "Please come just to talk, it will be easier for her." Imagine my surprise when I saw horsetail laid out for drying in the room of a dying woman. Its branches are drooping, twice branched, sheaths of stems with 4-5 brown wide sharp teeth. The woman said that she brews an infusion of such horsetail all her life ...
My grandmother taught me to distinguish horsetail as a child: “In the field horsetail, branches on the stems grow upwards towards the sun, the patient is pulled from illness to the sun. And those horsetails, in which the branches descend to the ground, and the patient will be laid in the ground. This image helped to find horsetail not only for me, but also for my daughters, who, by the way, also became pharmacists.
And in the villages they were afraid of hay with horsetails. Horses died from such hay (possibly due to the content of nicotine and saponins).

Horsetail is confused with meadow horsetail. Meadow horsetail does not have branches of the 2nd order, and the branches of the 1st order are long, horizontal, trihedral, their whorls are brown, the sheaths of the stems have unsoldered teeth with a white membranous border.
My grandmother always told me that marsh horsetail (river) is the most dangerous: its stem is very thick, there are no (or few) branches, there are shallow grooves on the stem and it has a wide cavity.

The chemical composition of horsetail

Horsetail grass contains alkaloids (equisetin, nicotine, 3-methoxypyridine), equizetonin saponin, flavonoids, organic acids (aconitic, malic, oxalic), fatty oil, essential oil, many salts of silicic acid, soluble in organic compounds, tannins, resins , bitterness, polyhydroxyanthraquinone compounds, vitamin C, carotene (provitamin A).

Horsetail herb properties

Horsetail was mentioned in ancient times by Avicenna in his writings. Horsetail was used as a unique hemostatic and cleansing agent.
In the Soviet Union, the study of horsetail began in the 40s of the twentieth century. In Russia, the effect of horsetail is still being studied at medical universities: for example, in 2008, the antitoxic, strong diuretic (diuretic), antiexudative, antifungal effect of the horsetail extract was proven, and an antispasmodic effect was noted.
Horsetail renders:

• astringent,
• hemostatic,
• diuretic,
• anti-inflammatory action
• promotes the excretion of lead from the body in case of lead poisoning

In animal experiments, it has been found that horsetail lowers blood sugar levels in diabetes mellitus.
Silicic acid and its salts are very important for most tissues of living organisms: they affect the synthesis of collagen (cartilage tissue) and the formation of bone tissue.
Therefore, an infusion of horsetail herb can be used in the pathology of the joints and cartilage, with hernias of the spine.
However, large doses are not recommended to avoid silicosis.

Horsetail grass should not be used for a long time.

In official medicine, horsetail preparations are used for inflammatory diseases of the urinary tract and kidneys, in the presence of urolithiasis. It is noteworthy that horsetail surpasses kidney tea in strength. However, horsetail preparations are contraindicated in nephritis and nephronephritis, because. may cause kidney irritation.
As a diuretic, horsetail herb infusion is used for congestion (edema), heart failure, pulmonary insufficiency.
Horsetail herb is used in complex collections for pleurisy, with hypertension.
As a hemostatic agent, horsetail herb is used for hemoptysis in tuberculosis, uterine bleeding.

Field horsetail is part of the anti-asthma mixture prescribed by Traskov.
An infusion of horsetail herb is used to wash purulent wounds, treat furunculosis, trophic ulcers, hemorrhoidal bleeding (make lotions with cold infusion).
Infusion of horsetail herb is used for rinsing with tonsillitis, stomatitis, nosebleeds.

In cosmetology, an infusion of horsetail herb is used for thinning hair, as a mask for acne, for oily skin. With baldness, horsetail silica is deposited near the hair roots and promotes their growth.

Previously, an infusion of horsetail herb was widely used by printers to cleanse the body of lead salts.

Modern pharmacologists recommend horsetail preparations for weight loss, as a beneficial effect on metabolism, normalizing the water-salt balance, removing toxins from the urine, in the form of complex fees for atherosclerosis, for detoxification in hepatitis, and is widely used externally in cosmetology.

Field horsetail preparations:

Liquid extract in cosmetology for skin and hair care
- field horsetail is part of the Phytolysin paste, which is used for kidney diseases inside
- horsetail herb in the form of infusion, decoction, tea, alcohol tincture, extract, ointment is used in official and folk medicine for various diseases

Most often, horsetail grass is used as part of fees. Fees are selected individually after consultation with a doctor.

Decoction of horsetail
We pour 4 tablespoons of dry herb horsetail with 1 cup of boiling water in an enamel bowl. It is necessary to cook in a water bath from the moment of boiling for 30 minutes, cool for 10 minutes, strain.
Drink a decoction of horsetail 1/3 cup 3 times a day 1 hour after eating. The course is only 3 weeks. Horsetail preparations should not be taken continuously for a long time to avoid silicosis.

Infusion of horsetail
2 tablespoons of dry herb horsetail pour 0.5 liters of boiling water in a thermos, insist 1 hour. Reception 1/2 cup for zo min before meals 4 times a day.

Contraindication for the application of horsetail herb is

• pregnancy,
• breastfeeding (lactation),
• severe kidney disease (nephritis, nephrosis),
• individual intolerance (allergy).

It is important to remember that the composition of the horsetail includes substances that can cause harm to health in case of an overdose. Consult your doctor before using horsetail, follow the dose and course of treatment.

Pharmacist-herbalist Sorokina Vera Vladimirovna

Among the higher spore plants, which include mosses, club mosses, ferns and horsetails, the latter have several features in their external and internal structure. The horsetail plant looks like a small Christmas tree with hard side stems. Interestingly, animals do not eat either it or other types of horsetail for food. This is explained by the fact that plant tissues are impregnated with silicon compounds. The systematic position of the genus Horsetail indicates the fact that their reproduction occurs with the help of spores. Our article will be devoted to the question of the structure of horsetail, as well as the consideration of its use in medical practice as a medicine.

What is alternation of generations?

In the life cycle of a plant, two life forms change cyclically: asexual and sexual generation. The first is represented by a perennial herbaceous plant, the second has the form of green plates with a dissected surface with numerous filaments. The reproductive organs develop on them: female - archegonia and male - antheridia. The maturation of eggs and sperm, as well as the fertilization process itself, occur only in the presence of water. So, in order to imagine what horsetails are, it is imperative to remember that plants exist in the form of two different forms - gametophyte and sporophyte.

External structure

As we said earlier, the asexual generation of horsetail is a plant that has aboveground and underground parts. Thus, the rhizome provides support and promotes vegetative reproduction. A large number of adventitious roots extending from it absorb water and minerals from the soil. On the rhizome there is a large number of thickenings - nodules. It grows deep into the ground. It should be noted that horsetails are an indicator of soil acidification. What are soil indicators? These are plants that require a certain concentration of soil solution for normal functioning. In our example, this is an excess amount of hydrogen ions, that is, a high acidity of the soil. As it turned out, plants of the Horsetail genus do not live on neutral or alkaline lands, therefore their favorite habitats are the biocenoses of swampy areas and river floodplains. The most common type of horsetail is the horsetail. It is its branches that are harvested as medicinal plant materials. There is also forest horsetail, meadow horsetail (has a triangular stem), marsh horsetail with a five-sided stem shape and black edges at the stem nodes. In addition, this species is also highly poisonous.

Vegetative organs

We continue to consider the appearance and properties of horsetail. In addition to the rhizome, the vegetative parts of the plant body include stems, leaves and sporangia. They form a sporophyte - asexual generation, whose task is to carry out the process of photosynthesis and the formation of reproductive organs - spore-bearing spikelets. The main ground shoot grows from the rhizome, it branches and is divided by nodes, from which lateral branches diverge in the form of a whorl. There are no leaves with a distinct leaf blade, they are reduced to colorless scales that grow from the nodes. Therefore, the function of photosynthesis in horsetails is performed by stems containing chlorophyll. We continue to study the higher spore plants - horsetails. What are spring and summer forms of shoots? It turns out that the axial organ of the plant is ribbed, impregnated with silicon compounds and has a clear differentiation. So, spring shoots are light pink in color, incapable of branching and devoid of green pigment and leaves. On their tops, sporangia are formed in the form of hard shields resembling spikelets containing haploid spores. Summer shoots are the main and adventitious stems, which are bright green in color. They are able to branch and, thanks to chlorophyll, carry out the synthesis of organic substances: proteins, carbohydrates and fats, and also provide the release of oxygen.

Sporangia and spores

Like other representatives of higher spore plants - mosses, club mosses and ferns, horsetails on a sporophyte plant develop organs in which cells of asexual reproduction - haploid spores - mature. Spikelets - sporangia of horsetails, have the form of special structures brought together, called sporangiophores. They are derivatives of lateral stems and look like rings tightly pressed against each other. Spores are formed by the process of meiosis and are haploid cells of the same type. Therefore, the question of what horsetails are in terms of the structure of their asexual generation - the sporophyte, can be answered as follows: they are equally spore plants. In addition, the spores are equipped with special springs - elaters, which serve as a device for their better distribution. Later, once on moist soil, the spores germinate and unisexual growths appear, on which male or female genital organs develop separately.

Gametophyte and fertilization process

Haploid spore cells in favorable environmental conditions (sufficient humidity and lack of direct sunlight) begin to form green lamellar structures with filamentous processes along the edges. This is how a sprout is formed. What kind of genitals, male or female, will form on it, will depend on the light and ambient temperature. Rhizoids are located on the underside of the growth, attaching it to the soil surface. Antheridia - male reproductive organs, provide the development of spermatozoa, and eggs are located in archegoniums. Fertilization occurs in the presence of water. An embryo develops from the resulting zygote, which later gives rise to the development of a sporophyte - an asexual generation of horsetail, the medicinal properties of which have been known to man for a long time. Next, we will consider them in more detail.

Application in medicine

One of the most common species - horsetail - is an effective diuretic and hemostatic herbal preparation obtained from the stems. In case of violation of the functioning of the kidneys and heart, accompanied by fluid retention in the tissues, the appearance of severe edema, a decoction is used, prepared in the proportion: 20 g of raw materials per 200 g of water. The diuretic effect is due to the presence of saponin in the shoots of horsetail and a high content of potassium ions. In addition to them, vegetable raw materials contain vitamin C, carotene, equisetrin, calcium and iron ions. A decoction of horsetail is used for uterine bleeding, in the treatment of pleurisy, in inflammatory processes in the ureters and bladder. Pharmacological raw materials can be purchased in pharmacies in the form of an extract, brewing bags or briquettes.

Horsetail: properties and contraindications

The presence in the vegetative parts of horsetail of a large number of trace elements, such as copper, boron, molybdenum, has a positive effect on the metabolism in the human body. However, a high concentration of alkaloids, glycosides and saponins determines not only the astringent, anti-inflammatory and diuretic properties of the plant, but can also cause a number of negative symptoms. For example: diarrhea, nausea, heaviness and pain in the epigastric region. Horsetail extract should be used with caution in the treatment of patients with peptic ulcer of the stomach and duodenum. A prerequisite for taking drugs is not only a strict dosage - no more than half a glass, but also the frequency of use (no more than 3 times a day), as well as compliance with the main rule - the use of a decoction or extract one hour after eating.

The role of horsetails in ecosystems

What is the significance of horsetail in nature? Giant extinct species of tree-like higher spore plants: horsetails, club mosses and ferns that lived in the Carboniferous period of the Paleozoic era, caused the formation of coal reserves in the bowels of the earth. Modern species of plants of the genus Horsetail are much smaller and common in different climatic zones, especially in floodplain meadows and swamps, as well as in coniferous forests. As we said earlier, horsetails feel great on acidic soils, many species, for example, field horsetail, infest crops and pastures for domestic animals, as they are inedible for them. In everyday life, the tough branches of horsetail, containing silicic acid and its salts, used to be used as an abrasive for cleaning heavily soiled kitchen utensils.

In our article, we examined the properties, structure and significance of horsetails in nature and human life.