Antheridium

Antheridium (red) and Oogon (to the right) of the Chara contraria The antheridium (plural: antheridia, from the Greek antheros = flowering) is a term from botany: it is the male gametangium (sexual organism) with cryptogamen plants such as mosses, ferns, bearwort plants and certain algae as well as fungi. In it, the mobile spermatozoids are formed, which subsequently fertilize the oocytes in the female sexual organs, the archegonia or oogonia. In the case of land-living mosses, water is necessary for the transfer to the Archegonium. For this purpose, the spermatozoids can swim short distances in a water droplet to the archegonium, from which they are chemotactically entangled. In the case of dioecious plants, it is also possible to cover larger distances by impinging rain drops and thus spraying spermatozoid-containing water onto the female plants. In the case of the living moss and fern plants, the antheridia have an outer cell layer of sterile cells; this lacks the antheridia of the aquatic algae.

For the seed plants (Spermatophyta), the antheridium is reduced to the generative cell of the pollinate. Very common are the ferns, especially the worm fern with the antheridia. Edit source text

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