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