Question: What is the strangest way a plant can reproduce?

Liz Barron-Majerik answered on 29 Mar 2023:

I think the way the mosses and ferns reproduce is a bit complicated and strange, though really that’s just because its a bit different. They produce a male and female gametophyte (each with ‘half’ the genes of the parent) but this form is the dominant generation in mosses – in that it is larger, long-lived, and photosynthetic. Essentially ‘the plant’.

The diploid form (i.e. the ‘offspring’ as we would understand it, the form with ‘all the genes’) is the lesser generation – it is smaller, short lived and nutritionally dependent on the haploid form. So essentially, the baby is dependent on the egg!