Bryophyte
Sexuality

The arrangement of antheridia and archegonia on an individual bryophyte plant is usually constant within a species, although in some species it may depend on environmental conditions. The main division is between species in which the antheridia and archegonia occur on the same plant and those in which they occur on different plants. The term monoicous may be used where antheridia and archegonia occur on the same gametophyte and the term dioicous where they occur on different gametophytes.

In seed plants, " monoecious " is used where flowers with anthers (microsporangia) and flowers with ovules (megasporangia) occur on the same sporophyte and " dioecious " where they occur on different sporophytes. These terms occasionally may be used instead of "monoicous" and "dioicous" to describe bryophyte gametophytes. "Monoecious" and "monoicous" are both derived from the Greek for "one house", "dioecious" and "dioicous" from the Greek for two houses. The use of the "-oicy" terminology refers to the gametophyte sexuality of bryophytes as distinct from the sporophyte sexuality of seed plants.

Monoicous plants are necessarily hermaphroditic, meaning that the same plant produces gametes of both sexes. The exact arrangement of the antheridia and archegonia in monoicous plants varies. They may be borne on different shoots (autoicous), on the same shoot but not together in a common structure (paroicous or paroecious), or together in a common "inflorescence" (synoicous or synoecious). Dioicous plants are unisexual, meaning that an individual plant has only one sex. All four patterns (autoicous, paroicous, synoicous and dioicous) occur in species of the moss genus Bryum.
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