ChapTitleBig12 Plant and Fungi DiversificationChapTitleSmallWHERE DID ALL THE PLANTS AND FUNGI COME FROM?

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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?

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