Relating to or characteristic of a gametophyte, the generation of a plant that produces sex cells through meiosis.
From 'gametophyte' (Greek 'gamete' + 'phyton', plant) with suffix '-ic'; used since the 1880s in plant biology to distinguish the sexual generation from the asexual sporophytic generation.
In mosses, the part you see is gametophytic—it's literally just living to make sperm and eggs—while in ferns it's hidden, and in flowering plants it's microscopic, showing how evolution keeps shrinking this phase.
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