The members of the Filicales are characterised by the same well-marked physiological division of labour in their vegetative parts as are the Lycopods; the plant is the asexual generation (sporophyte), while the sexual generation (gametophyte) is small and inconspicuous, either an independent green prothallus or a tissue more or less completely enclosed in the spore. The large size of the leaves, which in the young state are usually coiled like a crozier (fig. 220, A), is a striking characteristic of the ferns; they are megaphyllous in contrast to the microphylly of the Lycopods. I. =Leptosporangiate Filicales.= In these homosporous and heterosporous plants the sporangia are developed from single epidermal cells. [Illustration: FIG. 220. Young fronds of (A) _Angiopteris evecta_ and (B) _Cycas revoluta_. (Reduced.)] (_a_) _Eufilicineae._ The sporangia bear spores of one kind only; the wall of a sporangium consists of one layer of cells. In the great majority of cases the sporangia are characterised by the possession of a conspicuous row of thick-walled brown cells, the annulus[683], which serves as a mechanism for dehiscence and spore-dispersal. The fertile leaves, identical in form with the sterile, or more or less sharply contrasted, usually bear the sporangia on the under surface of the lamina in definite groups or sori, and not on the upper surface or grouped in strobili as in the Lycopodiales. The stem is dorsiventral or radial in structure, creeping or erect, frequently clothed with chaffy scales (ramenta) and less often with multicellular hairs. The sexual generation is represented by a small green prothallus which lives for a short period only and dies after nursing the fern-plant through its earliest stages. (_b_) _Hydropterideae._ Heterosporous water-ferns differing considerably in habit from the true ferns. Each megasporangium contains a single megaspore and several microspores are produced in each microsporangium. The gametophyte is represented by tissue more or less enclosed in the spore. [Genera _Salvinia_, _Azolla_, _Marsilia_, _Regnellidium_, _Pilularia_. See Chapter XXVI.]