Sporangium
As a sporangium is called in botany the formation site of spores. Sporangia occur in fungi, algae and all plants (mosses, horsetails, ferns and seed plants ).
In slime molds, he refers to a special form of the fruiting body in which a plasmodium divides into several to thousands of individual spores carrier.
In a narrow sense, the term is limited to the sporangium container having a sterile wall, in which the meiospores occur in plants. For a number of clans formed the meiospores vary in size: the sporangia, in which the ( male ) microspores are formed are the microsporangia; the formation locations of the (female ) megaspores hot Megasporangien accordingly.
The term sporangium was first used in 1779 by Ehrhart in mosses, which he called a part of the sporangium so. The present meaning was introduced by Johannes Hedwig 1798. In the seed plants are referred to as the microsporangia pollen sac and the nucellus as Megasporangien. These terms were coined before their homology was detected with the sporangia of ferns and mosses of Wilhelm Hofmeister.