Vascular plant

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Revision as of 23:59, 13 May 2006 by Rick Swarts (talk | contribs)
Vascular Plants
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Plantae (in part)
'Divisions'

The vascular plants are plants in the Kingdom Plantae (also called Viridiplantae) that have specialized tissues for conducting water. Vascular plants include the ferns, clubmosses, horsetails, flowering plants, conifers and other gymnosperms. Scientific names are Tracheophyta and Tracheobionta, but neither is very widely used. Nonvascular plants include both earlier-derived lineages in Plantae (mosses, hornworts, and liverworts) and members of other kingdoms (the various algae).

The vascular plants are set apart in two important ways:

  1. Vascular plants have water-carrying tissues, enabling the plants to evolve to a larger size. Non-vascular plants lack these and are restricted to relatively small sizes.
  2. In vascular plants, the principal generation phase is the sporophyte, which is diploid with two sets of chromosomes per cell. In non-vascular plants, the principal generation phase is often the gametophyte, which is haploid with one set of chromosomes per cell. See also alternation of generations.

Water transport happens in either xylem or phloem: xylem carries water and inorganic solutes upward toward the leaves from the roots, while phloem carries organic solutes throughout the plant.


This article is too short. You might want to take each of the "members" below and expand each into a paragraph. Actually, other than the ferms, I doubt we will have a separate entry for the other spore-bearing vascualar plants. The seed-bearing plants we will probably have. At any rate, can just cut and past content from the Wikipedia article on the first three spore-bearing plants. The other members cannot do that, because we will have separate articles. But one brief paragraph on each and what their characterists are would be helpful in this article, unless you have another way to expand it.

Members

  • Spore-bearing vascular plants
    • Equisetophyta ~ horsetails
    • Lycopodiophyta ~ clubmosses, spikemosses, quillworts
    • Psilotophyta ~ whisk-ferns
    • Pteridophyta~ ferns

See also

  • Fern allies

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