12  •  Plant and Fungi Diversification 493

Where did all the plants and fungi come from?

Plants are just one branch of the eukarya. 494

12.1

What makes a plant? 494

The first plants had neither roots nor seeds. 497

12.2

Colonizing land brings new opportunities and new challenges. 497

12.3

Mosses and other non-vascular plants lack vessels for transporting nutrients and water. 498

12.4

The evolution of vascular tissue made large plants possible. 501

The advent of the seed opened new worlds to plants. 503

12.5

What is a seed? 503

12.6

With the evolution of the seed, gymnosperms became the dominant plants on earth. 504

12.7

Conifers include the tallest and longest-living trees. 507

Flowering plants are the most diverse and successful plants. 508

12.8

Angiosperms are the dominant plants today. 508

12.9

A flower is nothing without a pollinator. 510

12.10

Angiosperms improve seeds with double fertilization. 512

Plants and animals have a love-hate relationship. 514

12.11

Fleshy fruits are bribes that flowering plants pay animals to disperse their seeds. 514

12.12

Unable to escape, plants must resist predation in other ways. 515

Fungi and plants are partners but not close relatives. 518

12.13

Fungi are closer to animals than they are to plants. 518

12.14

Fungi have some structures in common, but exploit an enormous diversity of habitats. 520

12.15

Most plants have fungal symbionts. 522

12.16

This is how we do it: Can beneficial fungi save our chocolate? 524

StreetBIO: KNOWLEDGE YOU CAN USE

Yams: nature’s fertility food? 526