Plant Diversity

From Water to Land

Kingdom Plantae first appeared about 410 million years ago as green algae transitioned from water to land. Though challenging, this transition benefited early colonizers in several ways. Initially, most living organisms (including plants and animals) were ocean dwelling, making aquatic environments crowded and highly ...

Before plants colonized land from the sea, the continents were barren. Now millions of species of microbes, plants, and animals live on land, and it was the evolution of land plants that made all of this possible. To understand this staggering transformation, we need to understand what exactly plants are and how they evolved to meet the challeng...