Kingdom Plantae

Introduction to the Plantae

The green kingdom

            The Plantae includes all land plants: mosses, ferns, conifers, flowering plants, and so on—an amazing range of diverse forms. With more than 250,000 species, they are second in size only to thearthropoda.
Plants have been around for a very long time. The plants first appeared in the Ordovician, but did not begin to resemble modern plants until the Late Silurian. By the close of the Devonian, about 360 million years ago, there were a wide variety of shapes and sizes of plants around, including tiny creeping plants and tall forest trees.
             The most striking, and important, feature of plants is their green color, the result of a pigment called chlorophyll. Plants use chlorophyll to capture light energy, which fuels the manufacture of food—sugar, starch, and other carbohydrates. Without these food sources, most life on earth would be impossible. There would still be mushrooms and algae, but there would be no fruits, vegetables, grains, or any animals (which ultimately rely on plants for their food too!)
             Another important contribution of plants is their shaping of the environment. Think of a place without plants. The only such places on earth are the arctic wastelands, really arid deserts, and the deep ocean. Everywhere else, from the tundra to the rainforest to the desert, is populated by plants. In fact, when we think of a particular landscape, it is the plants which first come to mind. Try to picture a forest without trees, or a prairie without grasses. It is the plants which produce and maintain the terrestrial environment as we know it.

Plants

Plants, also called green plants (Viridiplantae in Latin), are living multicellular organisms of the kingdom Plantae. They form aclade 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 algae, and some seaweeds such as kelp, thefungi, archaea and bacteria.

Green plants have cell walls with cellulose and characteristically obtain most of their energy

from sunlight via photosynthesis usingchlorophyll 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 andindeterminate growth, and an alternation of generations, although asexual reproduction is common.

Precise numbers are difficult to determine, but as of 2010, 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^{[citation needed]} and are the basis of most of the earth's ecologies, especially on land. Plants described as grains, fruits andvegetables form mankind's basic foodstuffs, and have been domesticated for millennia. Plants serve as ornaments and, until recently and in great variety, they have served as the source of most medicines and drugs. Their scientific study is known as botany, a branch of biology.

Plants Classification

Botanists classify plants into groups that have similar characteristics. 

Plants within a group are more closely related to other members of their own group than to members of another group, just as you are more closely related to your parents and brothers and sisters than you are to families of other students in your class.  

Six major Plant groups are listed here. More about two other groups of organisms, Fungi and Red Algae, can be found by clicking here. 

You can click on each group name to find the characteristics of the group and pictures of some of its members.

In each group there will be links that lead to information about some members of the group that are easily found in most of Utah.  

PLANTS

Angiosperms (Flowering Plants)

• Dicotyledons 
  • Aceraceae (Maple Family)
  • Asteraceae (Daisy Family)
  • Fabaceae (Pea Family)
  
  
• Monocotyledons
  • Liliaceae (Lily Family)
  • Orchidaceae (Orchid Family)
  • Poaceae (Grass Family)

Gymnosperms (Plants with unenclosed seeds)

• Conifers 
  • Pinaceae (Pine Family)
  • Cupressaceae (Juniper Family)
  
  

• Ephedra Group
  • Ephedraceae (Mormon Tea Family)

Horsetails

• Equisetaceae (Horsetail Family)

Ferns

Bryophytes

• Mosses

• Liverworts

Green Algae

Parts of a Plant

Roots -> Take in water and food (mineral salts) from soil. Anchors plants. The roots of a plant are spread out. Stem -> "Like a straw", transports water through plant. Raises the height of flowers and leaves. Brings closer to light. Structural. The stem is made up of little tubes. Leaves -> Different shapes. Almost always green but sometimes covered with another colour such as red. Green substance in leaves -> chlorophyll. Leaves make food for the plant. To do this they need the water and mineral salts obtained from the soil. They are carried inside little veins in the leaf. To make food leaves also need sunshine and CO2. Flowers - > Flowers produce seeds which form new plants. Space and warmth also needed for a plant to grow.

Roots

In vascular plants, the root is the organ of a plant that typically lies below the surface of the soil. However, roots can also be aerialor aerating (growing up above the ground or especially above water). Furthermore, a stem normally occurring below ground is not exceptional either (see rhizome).Therefore, the root is best defined as the non-leaf, non-nodes bearing parts of the plant's body. However, important internal structural differences between stems and roots exist.

The first root that comes from a plant is called the radicle. The four major functions of roots are 1) absorption of water and inorganic nutrients, 2) anchoring of the plant body to the ground, and supporting it, 3) storage of food and nutrients, 4) vegetative reproduction. In response to the concentration of nutrients, roots also synthesise cytokinin, which acts as a signal as to how fast the shoots can grow. Roots often function in storage of food and nutrients. The roots of most vascular plant species enter into symbiosis with certain fungi to form mycorrhizae, and a large range of other organisms including bacteria also closely associate with roots.

Parts of a Root






 Root Hairs 

The root hairs are thin, hairlike outgrowths of a root. 
The root hairs absorb water and minerals from the soil.

 Root Caps

 The root caps are groups of tiny cells 

which grow at the tips of roots.

Root caps are spherical in shape.

The root caps help to protect the root

tip from the roughness of the soil as

roots grow in search of water.

                                                                           Primary Root

The primary root is the largest part of

the root. The primary root is usually

located directly below the main stem

of the plant. The primary root is the

main path from the smaller roots to

the stem. Sometimes the primary

root stores food for the plant.

   Secondary Root

 

The secondary roots are roots which

branch off from the primary root.

Secondary roots grow down at an angle.

Secondary roots serve as a pathway

for food and water from the root 

hairs to the primary root.

Fruit

Fruit anatomy is the internal structure of fruit, the mature ovary or ovaries from one or moreflowers. In fleshy fruits, the outer and often edible layer is the pericarp, which is the tissue that develops from the ovary wall of the flower and surrounds the seeds.

In some seemingly pericarp fruits, the edible portion is not derived from the ovary. For example, in the fruit of the ackee tree, the edible portion is an aril; and in the pineapple several tissues from the flower and stem are involved.

A cavity inside the fruit that contain the ovules or seeds                                                                                                    called a cell.

Parts of a Fruit

FRUIT PARTS

pericarp	the fruit wall (derived from the ovary of the pistil) which is composed of the exocarp, mesocarp and endocarp (the three layers are not always recognizable, ex. dry fruit)
endocarp	the innermost layer of the pericarp (often hard, stony or papery)
mesocarp	the middle layer of the pericarp (often fleshy)
exocarp	the outermost layer of the pericarp (often like a skin or peel). (peach)

Peach