sporophore

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

• noun A spore-bearing structure, especially in fungi.

from The Century Dictionary.

• noun In botany: A placenta.
• noun The branch or part of the thallus which bears spores or spore mothercells. The various forms are further distinguished as gonidiophore, sporangiophore, ascophore, etc.
• noun In Archegoniateæ, a sporophyte. Also called encarpium.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

• noun A placenta.
• noun That alternately produced form of certain cryptogamous plants, as ferns, mosses, and the like, which is nonsexual, but produces spores in countless numbers. In ferns it is the leafy plant, in mosses the capsule. Cf. oöphore.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

• noun A spore-producing organ, especially a fungus hypha specialized to carry spores.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

• noun a spore-bearing branch or organ: the part of the thallus of a sporophyte that develops spores; in ferns and mosses and liverworts is practically equivalent to the sporophyte