Asexual reproduction
The production of a new organism from the spores or the vegetative parts of a single mature organism is called asexual reproduction.
Nothing fuses and nothing is exchanged. A piece of the parent, or a spore it has made, becomes an organism in its own right. Because every cell in that piece was copied from the parent by ordinary cell division, the offspring carries the parent's characteristics and very little else.
Where you see it
- A piece of a ginger rhizome sprouting into a new ginger plant.
- A fungus releasing spores that each grow into a new fungus.
- A bacterium dividing in two.
One parent is the whole test
If you can point to only one parent, the reproduction was asexual. Everything else — no gametes, no meiosis, offspring nearly identical to the parent — follows from that one fact.