In some solenostelic ferns, and in many dictyostelic ones additional vascular strands are present which do not form part of the primary vascular tube.
In the petiole these strands may increase in number by branching, and thotigh usually reducible to the outline of the primitive horseshoe, more or less elaborated, they may in some of the complex polycylic dictyostelic types (Marattiaceae) be arranged in several concentric circles, thus imitating the arrangement of strands formed in the stem.
Polycycly was derived independently from monocycly in solenostelic and in dictyostelic forms. In the formation of the stem of any fern characterized in the adult condition by one of the more advanced types of vascular structure all stages of increase in complexity from the haplostele of the first-formed stem to the particular condition characteristic of the adult stem are gradually passed through by a series of changes exactly parallel with those which we are led to suppose, from the evidence obtained by a comparison of the adult forms, must have taken place in the evolution of the race, There is no more striking case in the plantkingdom of the parallel between ontogeny (development of the individual) and phylogeny (development of the race) so well known in many groups of animals.