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Plant

This article is about plants as living organisms. For other uses, see Plant (disambiguation)

Table of contents

1 Difficulties in the definition 2 Evolution and classification of the Plant Kingdom 3 Plant categories 4 General plant information 5 See also 6 External links

Difficulties in the definition

The term plant is far more difficult to define than might be obvious. Although botanists describe a Kingdom Plantae, the boundaries defining members of Plantae are more exclusive than common definitions of "plant". We are tempted to regard plant as meaning a multicellular, eukaryotic organism that generally does not have sensory organss or voluntary motion and has, when complete, a root, stem, and leavess. However, botanically only vascular plants have "a root, stem, and leaves", and even some vascular plants, such as some carnivorous plants and duckweed, fall afoul of the definition. But to be fair, the vascular plants are the plants we tend to encounter every day.

Another, much broader (more inclusive) definition for plant is that it refers to anything that is photoautotrophic — that is, produces its own food from raw inorganic materials and sunlight. This is not an unreasonable definition, and one that focuses on the role plants typically play in an ecosystem. However, there are photoautotrophs among the Prokaryotes, specifically photoautotrophic bacteria and cyanophytes. The latter are sometimes called (for good reasons) blue-green algae. Then there arises the problem that most people, including botanists, would call a mushroom a plant, although a mushroom is the fruiting body of a fungus (Kingdom Fungi), and not photoautotrophic at all, but saprophytic. And there are more than a few species of flowering plants, fungi, and bacteria that are parasitic.

Contemporary biological classification systems (see cladistics) tend to emphasize genetic relationships between organisms as the basis of classification. Ideally, a taxon (or clade) should be monophyletic; all of the organisms in the taxon or clade should share a single common ancestor, and the taxon or clade should include all descendants of that common ancestor. Another way to define the Plant Kingdom would be to determine whether all of the organisms in the kingdom can be traced to a common ancestor.

We cannot offer a firm answer. The list of characteristics that separate the Plantae from the other biological kingdoms provides at least a technical definition. The problem this lack of precision or agreement in the definition of "plant" presents is one of understanding statements, often encountered in Wikipedia articles, of the sort: ...xylem is one of the two transport tissues of plants. In general it cannot be assumed this means all plants, algae through flowering plants. It very probably does not include fungi or bacteria. Indeed, it is usually safest to assume the discussion is about vascular plants (essentially the ferns, conifers, flowering plants, and a few others) unless stated differently (e.g., ...in vascular and non-vascular plants this is such and such).

The system of classification (see Scientific classification) employed by biologists to catalogue the earth's living organisms is one to which thousands of scientists daily devote a tremendous number of man-hours. The system devised attempts to be a "natural" one, defining the evolutionary relationships between all the different species (including those known only from fossils). Plants are a part of that categorization effort and whether defining "plant" narrowly or broadly, we must include some reference to the classification system in any scholarly effort to gain or give information about them.

• For plants as defined in the Kingdom Plantae see below.
• For algae in general see alga or seaweed.
• For mushrooms see mushroom or fungi.
• For nonvascular plants in general, see nonvascular plant.
• For vascular plants in general, see vascular plant.
• For coniferous plants see Pinophyta or gymnosperms.
• For flowering plants see angiosperms.

Kingdom Plantae (or Viridaeplantae) is a monophyletic group of eukaryotes (organisms with nucleated cells). Over 60 major lineages of eukaryotes have been identified, most of which are unicellular and classified in the paraphyletic kingdom Protista. Kingdom Plantae is a monophyletic group consisting of eukaryotic organisms that photosynthesize using chlorophylls a and b, store their photosynthetic products as starch inside the chloroplasts in which they are produced, have chloroplasts that are bounded by a double membrane, and have cell walls made of cellulose. The Kingdom includes several groups of green algae that evolved from the common ancestor of green plants. Green algae come in a variety of forms: flagellate, colonial, filamentous, and even primitively multicellular. Many are primarily haploid, but others exhibit alternation of generations between haploid and diploid forms, called the gametophyte and sporophyte.

Some time during the Palaeozoic, complex, multicellular plants (the Embryophytes) began to appear on land. In these early new forms, the gametophyte and sporophyte become very different in shape and function, the sporophyte remaining small and dependent on its parent for its whole brief life. Groups at this level of organization, collectively called bryophytes, include:

• Division Hepaticophyta (Marchantiomorpha), liverworts
• Division Anthocerotophyta, hornworts
• Division Bryophyta, mosses

• Division Lycopodiophyta (Lycopsida), club mosses
• Division Equisetophyta (Equisetopsida), horsetails
• Division Pteridophyta (Filicopsida), ferns
  • Psilotophyta (Psilotales), whisk ferns
  • Ophioglossophyta (Ophioglossales), adders-tongues, moonworts and grape-ferns
  • Marattiopsida
  • leptosporangiate or "true" ferns

• Division Cycadophyta (Cycads)
• Division Ginkgophyta (Ginkgo)
• Division Pinophyta (Conifers, Coniferophyta)
• Division Gnetophyta (Gnetae)
• Division Magnoliophyta (Flowering plants, Anthophyta)

Plant categories

In addition to the scientific classification of plants, or our more populist approach based upon that system, we may want to classify plants in a variety of other ways, some of which are considered here.

Plants may be organized according to their seasonal growth pattern. Of course simple plants like algae have individually short life spans and the following terms do not apply, but algae populations are commonly seasonal.

• Annual: live and reproduce within one growing season.
• Biennial: live for two growing seasons; usually reproduce in second year.
• Perennial: live for many growing seasons; continue to reproduce once mature.

Perennial vascular plants may be either evergreen, and keep their leaves all year round, or deciduous and lose their leaves for part of the year. Many deciduous plants, usually found in temperate and boreal climates, lose their leaves in the winter months, and some tropical and subtropical plants lose their leaves during the dry season.

Plants may also be organized according to how they are used. Food plants include fruits, vegetables, herbs, and spices.

General plant information

See also

• Biota
• Botany
• Flowers
• Fruits
• Herbs
• List of fruits
• Fruit trees
• List of flowers
• List of garden plants
• List of vegetables
• phytophilia (love of plants)
• Shrubs
• Trees
• Woody plants
• Vegetables

• Tree of Life

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