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The term "gymnosperm" is often used in paleobotany to refer to (the paraphyletic group of) all non-angiosperm seed plants. In that case, to specify the modern monophyletic group of gymnosperms, the term Acrogymnospermae is sometimes used. [5] The gymnosperms and angiosperms together constitute the spermatophytes or seed plants.
The fifth extant division is the flowering plants, also known as angiosperms or magnoliophytes, the largest and most diverse group of spermatophytes: Angiosperms, the flowering plants, possess seeds enclosed in a fruit, unlike gymnosperms.
The term angiosperm fundamentally changed in meaning in 1827 with Robert Brown, when angiosperm came to mean a seed plant with enclosed ovules. [ 35 ] [ 36 ] In 1851, with Wilhelm Hofmeister 's work on embryo-sacs, Angiosperm came to have its modern meaning of all the flowering plants including Dicotyledons and Monocotyledons.
The name comes from the Greek for "naked seed"; the egg cells are not protected by ovaries, as in flowering plants. [4] Gymnosperms are divided into 12 families of trees, shrubs and woody vines. [5] Sequoiadendron giganteum, the giant redwood, is the largest tree in the world, and Sequoia sempervirens, the coastal redwood, is the tallest. [6]
For one, both male and female cycads are gymnosperms and bear cones (strobili), while palms are angiosperms and so flower and bear fruit. The mature foliage looks very similar between both groups, but the young emerging leaves of a cycad resemble a fiddlehead fern before they unfold and take their place in the rosette, while the leaves of palms ...
Gnetophyta (/ n ɛ ˈ t ɒ f ɪ t ə, ˈ n ɛ t oʊ f aɪ t ə /) is a division of plants (alternatively considered the subclass Gnetidae or order Gnetales), grouped within the gymnosperms (which also includes conifers, cycads, and ginkgos), that consists of some 70 species across the three relict genera: Gnetum (family Gnetaceae), Welwitschia (family Welwitschiaceae), and Ephedra (family ...
The fossil history of flowering plants records the development of flowers and other distinctive structures of the angiosperms, now the dominant group of plants on land.The history is controversial as flowering plants appear in great diversity in the Cretaceous, with scanty and debatable records before that, creating a puzzle for evolutionary biologists that Charles Darwin named an "abominable ...
Some more recent studies have used the word anthophyte to describe a hypothetical group which includes the angiosperms and a variety of extinct seed plant groups (with various suggestions including at least some of the following groups: glossopterids, corystosperms, Petriellales Pentoxylales, Bennettitales and Caytoniales), but not the Gnetales.