Plants, also called green plants

For other uses, see Plant (disambiguation).

Plants

Temporal range:

Early Cambrian to recent, but see text, 520–0Ma

PreЄЄOSDCPTJKPgN

Scientific classification

Domain: Eukaryota

(unranked): Archaeplastida

Kingdom: Plantae

Haeckel, 1866[1][verification needed]

Divisions

Green algae

Chlorophyta

Charophyta

Land plants (embryophytes)

Non-vascular land plants (bryophytes)

Marchantiophyta—liverworts

Anthocerotophyta—hornworts

Bryophyta—mosses

†Horneophytopsida

Vascular plants (tracheophytes)

†Rhyniophyta—rhyniophytes

†Zosterophyllophyta—zosterophylls

Lycopodiophyta—clubmosses

†Trimerophytophyta—trimerophytes

Pteridophyta—ferns and horsetails

†Progymnospermophyta

Seed plants (spermatophytes)

†Pteridospermatophyta—seed ferns

Pinophyta—conifers

Cycadophyta—cycads

Ginkgophyta—ginkgo

Gnetophyta—gnetae

Magnoliophyta—flowering plants

†Nematophytes

Synonyms

Chloroplastida Adl et al., 2005

Viridiplantae Cavalier-Smith 1981

Chlorobionta Jeffrey 1982, emend. Bremer 1985, emend. Lewis and McCourt 2004

Chlorobiota Kendrick and Crane 1997

Plants, also called green plants (Viridiplantae in Latin), are living multicellular organisms of the kingdom Plantae. They form a clade that includes the flowering plants, conifers and other gymnosperms, ferns, clubmosses, hornworts, liverworts and mosses, as well as, depending on definition, the green algae. Plants exclude the red and brown seaweeds such as kelp, the fungi and bacteria.

Green plants have cell walls with cellulose and characteristically obtain most of their energy from sunlight via photosynthesis using chlorophyll contained in chloroplasts, which gives them their green color. Some plants are parasitic and have lost the ability to produce normal amounts of chlorophyll or to photosynthesize. Plants are also characterized by sexual reproduction, modular and indeterminate growth, and an alternation of generations, although asexual reproduction is common, and some plants bloom only once while others bear only one bloom.

Precise numbers are difficult to determine, but as of 2010[update], there are thought to be 300–315 thousand species of plants, of which the great majority, some 260–290 thousand, are seed plants (see the table below).[2] Green plants provide most of the world's molecular oxygen and are the basis of most of the earth's ecologies, especially on land. Plants described as grains, fruits and vegetables form mankind's basic foodstuffs, and have been domesticated for millennia. Plants serve

...