Botany and Plant Science

All four statements are correct: Pteridophytes lack companion cells, xylem vessels are generally absent (except in some Gnetales/Selaginella), heterosporous ones have reduced gametophytes, and water is required for fertilization.

Pteridophytes comprise of a group of roughly 12,000 species of vascular plants that reproduce via spores and have neither seeds nor flowers, e.g., fern. They differ from mosses by being vascular (i.e., having water-conducting vessels). They have stems and leaves like other vascular plants. 

The gametophyte of ferns and other pteridophytes is known as the prothallus. It is one cell thick, usually heart or kidney shaped and does not have roots, stems or leaves, but it does have rhizoids that anchor it to the soil and help with absorption. Both female (archegonium) and male (antheridium) sex organs are present in the prothallus. 

Each sperm of antherozoids is spirally coiled (2-3 coils) multiflagellated bearing 40-50 whiplash type flagella which are not applicable to fertilization in Dryopteris.

ln pteridophytes, the diploid sporophyte is represented by a dominant, independent, photosynthetic, vascular plant body. It alternates with multicellular, saprophytic autotrophic, independent but short-lived haploid gametophyte.

Bryophytes are an informal group consisting of three divisions of non-vascular land plants: the liverworts, hornworts and mosses. They are characteristically limited in size and prefer moist habitats although they can survive in drier environments. A bryophyte spore germinates and produces an often algal-like mat, called a protonema (plural protonemata) and the leafy or thalloid stage of the gametophyte develops from the protonemal stage. The protonemata are almost always ephemeral but there are exceptions. Amongst the mosses there is a small number of species in which the protonemata are persistent and the leafy plants are ephemeral. The spore was haploid and so are the resulting protonema and the ensuing leafy or thalloid stages.

Most of the algae have dominant gametophyte generations. But in some species, the gametophytes and sporophytes are morphologically similar. An independent sporophyte is a dominant form in all clubmosses, horsetails, ferns, gymnosperms, and angiosperms that have survived to the present day. The gametophyte is dominant in the mosses, liverworts & hornworts only. In mosses, the gametophyte feeds its small attached offspring sporophyte. The mature sporophyte is composed of a "foot" that remains stuck in the gametophyte moss carpet. The sporophyte stands above the moss mat as a long stalk and a capsule that looks like a salt shaker at the tip.
The sporophyte is dominant in all other plants: the ferns, club mosses, horsetails, the gymnosperm (conifers, cycads, ginkgo), and the angiosperm.
In gymnosperm and angiosperm, the entire gametophyte generation is miniature and contained in the cones or the flowers.

Fern phloem lacks companion cells. Placenta in fern is the place of attachment of sporangia.
Companion cells occur only in angiosperms.
Companion cell is any of a number of specialized parenchyma cells adjacent to a sieve tube in the phloem of flowering plants, believed to regulate the flow of nutrients through the tube.

Pteridophyta is the primitive vascular plants. They are also called as vascular cryptogams. They are flowerless, seedless, spore-bearing vascular plants. In pteridophytes, the xylem mainly consists of tracheids and xylem parenchyma. Generally, vessels are absent but some primitive types of vessels are present in some of the species.

Ramenta is one of the thin, chaff like scales covering the shoots or leaves of certain ferns. Young leaves of fern are protected by ramenta.
Therefore, the correct answer is option B.