Vascular plant
From the Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia that anyone can change
| Vascular Plants Fossil range: Early Silurian - Recent |
||
|---|---|---|
 |
||
| Scientific classification | ||
|
||
| Divisions | ||
|
The vascular plants, tracheophytes or higher plants are plants in the kingdom Plantae that have specialized tissues for conducting water, minerals, and photosynthetic products through the plant.
They include the ferns, clubmosses, horsetails, flowering plants, conifers and other gymnosperms.[1]
The vascular plants are set apart in two main ways:
- Vascular plants have vascular tissues, which circulate resources through the plant. This feature allows vascular plants to grow to a larger size than non-vascular plants, which lack these specialized conducting tissues and are therefore restricted to relatively small sizes.
- In vascular plants, the principal generation phase is the sporophyte, which is diploid with two sets of chromosomes per cell.[2]
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.
[change] Members
- Spore-bearing vascular plants
- Equisetophyta ~ horsetails
- Lycopodiophyta ~ clubmosses, spikemosses, quillworts
- Psilotophyta ~ whisk-ferns
- Pteridophyta~ ferns
- Seed-bearing vascular plants - Superdivision Spermatophyta
- Pinophyta ~ conifers
- Cycadophyta ~ cycads
- Ginkgophyta ~ ginkgoes
- Gnetophyta ~ gnetophytes
- Magnoliophyta ~ flowering plants
[change] References
- ↑ Scientific names are Tracheophyta and Tracheobionta, but neither is very widely used.
- ↑ In non-vascular plants, the principal generation phase is often the gametophyte, which is haploid with one set of chromosomes per cell.
