Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
An example of moss (Bryophyta) on the forest floor in Broken Bow, Oklahoma. Bryophytes (/ ˈ b r aɪ. ə ˌ f aɪ t s /) [2] are a group of land plants (embryophytes), sometimes treated as a taxonomic division, that contains three groups of non-vascular land plants: the liverworts, hornworts, and mosses (Bryophyta sensu lato). [3]
The streptophyte algae (i.e. excluding the land plants) have around 122 genera; they adapted to fresh water very early in their evolutionary history and have not spread back into marine environments. [28] [29] [30] Some time during the Ordovician, streptophytes invaded the land and began the evolution of the embryophyte land plants. [31]
Chloroplasts (green discs) and accumulated starch granules in cells of Bryum capillare. Botanically, mosses are non-vascular plants in the land plant division Bryophyta. They are usually small (a few centimeters tall) herbaceous (non-woody) plants that absorb water and nutrients mainly through their leaves and harvest carbon dioxide and sunlight to create food by photosynthesis.
Rhizoids are protuberances that extend from the lower epidermal cells of bryophytes and algae. They are similar in structure and function to the root hairs of vascular land plants. Similar structures are formed by some fungi. Rhizoids may be unicellular or multicellular. [1]
Cycads were also common, as were ginkgos and tree ferns in the forest. Smaller ferns were probably the dominant undergrowth. Caytoniaceous seed ferns were another group of important plants during this time and are thought to have been shrub to small-tree sized. [16] Ginkgo-like plants were particularly common in the mid- to high northern latitudes.
Land plants evolved from a group of freshwater green algae, perhaps as early as 850 mya, [3] but algae-like plants might have evolved as early as 1 billion years ago. [2] The closest living relatives of land plants are the charophytes, specifically Charales; if modern Charales are similar to the distant ancestors they share with land plants, this means that the land plants evolved from a ...
The ferns (Polypodiopsida or Polypodiophyta) are a group of vascular plants (plants with xylem and phloem) that reproduce via spores and have neither seeds nor flowers.They differ from mosses by being vascular, i.e., having specialized tissues that conduct water and nutrients, and in having life cycles in which the branched sporophyte is the dominant phase.
Bryophytes, an informal group that taxonomists now treat as three separate land-plant divisions, namely: Bryophyta (mosses), Marchantiophyta (liverworts), and Anthocerotophyta (hornworts). In all bryophytes, the primary plants are the haploid gametophytes , with the only diploid portion being the attached sporophyte, consisting of a stalk and ...