Plants are just one branch of the eukarya.

• 12.1 What makes a plant?

The first plants had neither roots nor seeds.

• 12.2 Colonizing land brings new opportunities and new challenges.
• 12.3 Mosses and other non-vascular plants lack vessels for transporting nutrients and water.
• 12.4 The evolution of vascular tissue made large plants possible.

The advent of the seed opened new worlds to plants.

• 12.5 What is a seed?
• 12.6 With the evolution of the seed, gymnosperms became the dominant plants on earth.
• 12.7 Conifers include the tallest and longest-living trees.

Flowering plants are the most diverse and successful plants.

• 12.8 Angiosperms are the dominant plants today.
• 12.9 A flower is nothing without a pollinator.
• 12.10 Angiosperms improve seeds with double fertilization.

Plants and animals have a love-hate relationship.

• 12.11 Fleshy fruits are bribes that flowering plants pay animals to disperse their seeds.
• 12.12 Unable to escape, plants must resist predation in other ways.

Fungi and plants are partners but not close relatives.

• 12.13 Fungi are closer to animals than they are to plants.
• 12.14 Fungi have some structures in common, but exploit an enormous diversity of habitats.
• 12.15 Most plants have fungal symbionts.
• 12.16 This is how we do it: Can beneficial fungi save our chocolate?