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Terrestrial plants on State Game Land 100 in Centre County, Pennsylvania. A terrestrial plant is a plant that grows on, in or from land. [1] Other types of plants are aquatic (living in or on water), semiaquatic (living at edge or seasonally in water), epiphytic (living on other plants), and lithophytic (living in or on rocks).
The embryophytes are informally called "land plants" because they thrive primarily in terrestrial habitats (despite some members having evolved secondarily to live once again in semiaquatic/aquatic habitats), while the related green algae are primarily aquatic.
Terrestrial ecosystems occupy 55,660,000 mi 2 (144,150,000 km 2), or 28.26% of Earth's surface. [5] Major plant taxa in terrestrial ecosystems are members of the division Magnoliophyta (flowering plants), of which there are about 275,000 species, and the division Pinophyta (conifers), of which there are about 500 species.
The evolution of plants has resulted in a wide range of complexity, from the earliest algal mats of unicellular archaeplastids evolved through endosymbiosis, through multicellular marine and freshwater green algae, to spore-bearing terrestrial bryophytes, lycopods and ferns, and eventually to the complex seed-bearing gymnosperms and angiosperms ...
However, the clade Viridiplantae or green plants includes some other groups of photosynthetic eukaryotes, including green algae. It is widely believed that land plants evolved from a group of charophytes, most likely simple single-celled terrestrial algae similar to extant Klebsormidiophyceae. [1]
Terrestrial plants also form type III kerogen, a source of natural gas. [116] [117] Structural resources and fibres from plants are used to construct dwellings and to manufacture clothing. Wood is used for buildings, boats, and furniture, and for smaller items such as musical instruments and sports equipment.
This is a list of plants organized by their common names. However, the common names of plants often vary from region to region, which is why most plant encyclopedias refer to plants using their scientific names , in other words using binomials or "Latin" names.
Living biomass holds about 550 gigatons of carbon, [1] most of which is made of terrestrial plants (wood), while some 1,200 gigatons of carbon are stored in the terrestrial biosphere as dead biomass. [2] Carbon is cycled through the terrestrial biosphere with varying speeds, depending on what form it is stored in and under which circumstances. [3]