Anthoid

The fructification of the spores is effected by the turbid fluid which proceeds from the apertures of the anthoid organs, and flows over the surface of the fronds.

Most Naturalists are now disposed to separate from the true Polypina the Bryozoa, or so-called Ciliobrachiate Polypes, which, though presenting a considerable resemblance to the Polypes in their external anthoid appearance, yet approach much more nearly to the Tunicated Acephalous Mollusca by their internal organisation; and remarkable affinities have been pointed out between some of the Polypina and Acalephae, which show that these classes, though very dissimilar in their external forms and mode of life, are in reality very closely allied in structure.

Anthoid Mollusca are divided into three orders: first, Brachiopods, (from the Greek brachion, arm, and pous, foot,) with a bivalve shell, symmetrical in form; second, Ascidions, which have no hard shells and hence are hardly recognized as fossils; third, Bryozoans (from the Greek bruon, moss, and zoon, animal,) of minute size, sometimes branched like moss.

The functional reproductive units are either rather simple anthoids (as found in e.g., all or nearly all monocotyledons, and in amentiferous and most of the other monochlamydeous forms) or more intricately organised holanthocormoids (almost always, if not exclusively, zoophilous).

The assumption that in holanthocormous flowers the gonoclad bracts provided the sepaloid elements and the monandra the semaphyllous (petaloid) ones, whereas in anthoids only merandrial perianth members (tepals) can be present (each gonoclad bract remaining a bract subtending the anthoid), is in good agreement with the conditions actually encountered, the more so since we find that the theory requires a prevalence of solitary flowers in taxa with holanthocormous flowers, and of racemoid aggregates of anthoids in other taxa.

The distal spikelets are reduced to solitary flowers (anthoids) leaving the raised areole-like elliptical scars when detached.

Lam (1950), for example, divided the angiosperms into phyllosporous and stachysporous groups, whereas Meeuse (1986) in his Anthocorm Theory suggests that there are at least two different kinds of flower (or in Meeuse's terminology FRUs, functional reproductive units): holoanths and anthoids.

According to this hypothesis the Pandanalean flower would be an anthoid, and "... a number of magnoliophytic taxa are primarily aphananthous (e.g. palms, amentiferous groups, Urticales) and if they are zoophilous, have secondarily acquired this form of pollination e.g. by the advent of extrafloral semaphylls (Euphorbiaceae, ... Freycinetia, Dichromena..." (Meeuse 1976).