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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.
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. [3]
In all bryophytes, the primary plants are the haploid gametophytes, with the only diploid portion being the attached sporophyte, consisting of a stalk and sporangium. Because these plants lack lignified water-conducting tissues, they cannot become as tall as most vascular plants. Algae, especially green algae. The algae consist of several ...
The sporophyte in hornworts is unique among bryophytes in being long-lived with a persistent photosynthetic capacity. [16] The sporophyte lacks an apical meristem, an auxin-sensitive point of divergence with other land plants some time in the Late Silurian/Early Devonian. [17] [18]
Most bryophytes, such as these mosses, produce stalked sporophytes from which their spores are released. The non-vascular land plants, namely the mosses (Bryophyta), hornworts (Anthocerotophyta), and liverworts (Marchantiophyta), are relatively small plants, often confined to environments that are humid or at least seasonally moist.
Liverworts, like other bryophytes, have a gametophyte-dominant life cycle, with the sporophyte dependent on the gametophyte. [13] The sporophyte of many liverworts are non-photosynthetic, but there are also several that are photosynthetic to various degrees. [14]
The photosynthesis conducted by land plants and algae is the ultimate source of energy and organic material in nearly all ecosystems. Photosynthesis, at first by cyanobacteria and later by photosynthetic eukaryotes, radically changed the composition of the early Earth's anoxic atmosphere, which as a result is now 21% oxygen .
In the strictest sense, the name plant refers to those land plants that form the clade Embryophyta, comprising the bryophytes and vascular plants.However, the clade Viridiplantae or green plants includes some other groups of photosynthetic eukaryotes, including green algae.