Embryophytes (land plants)

Chapter by:

Elizabeth J. Hermsen, Paleontological Research Institution, Ithaca, New York, U.S.A.

Citation:

Hermsen, E.J. 2019–. Embryophytes (land plants). In: The Digital Encyclopedia of Ancient Life. https://www.digitalatlasofancientlife.org/learn/embryophytes/

Chapter last updated 4 December 2020.

Contents:

• Embryophytes (land plants) ←
  1. Origin of land plants
  2. The land plant life cycle
  3. Greek & Latin in botanical terminology
• Bryophytes (coming soon)
• Introduction to vascular plant structure
  1. Leaf structure & evolution
  2. Branching
• Protracheophytes & early tracheophytes (coming soon)
• Lycophytes (coming soon)
• Trimerophytes (coming soon)
• Equisetophytes (coming soon)
• Eusporangiate ferns (coming soon)
• Leptosporangiate ferns (coming soon)
• Gymnosperms (coming soon)
• Angiosperms (flowering plants)
  1. Flowers
  2. Life cycle
  3. Pollination
  4. Fruits
  5. Fruit & seed dispersal
  6. Leaf architecture
  7. Overview of angiosperm phylogeny

Associated materials:

• Virtual collection of plant fossils (3D models of fossil specimens)

Feature image: Representative embryophytes. Top row, left to right: Thalloid liverworts (Marchantia); angiosperm wood (Quercus) showing growth rings; a horsetail cone (Equiestum sp.); a reconstruction of an early polysporangiophyte; and groundcedar, a modern lycophyte (Diphasiastrum digitatum). Bottom row, left to right: A fossil sycamore leaf (Platanus wyomingensis, Eocene, U.S.A.); ovulate (female) cones of bald cypress, a conifer (Taxodium distichum); cast of the base of an ancient tree stump (Eospermatopteris, Devonian, Gilboa, New York, U.S.A.); fiddlehead of a Christmas fern (Polystichum arostichoides). Credit: E.J. Hermsen (DEAL).

Further reading

Note: Free access is made available by the publisher for items marked with a green star.

General botany

Bierhorst, D.W. 1971. Morphology of vascular plants. The Macmillan Company, New York.

Esau, K. 1977. Anatomy of seed plants, 2nd. ed. John Wiley & Sons, New York.

Evert, R.F., and S.E. Eichhorn. 2013. Raven biology of plants, 8^th ed. W.H. Freeman and Co., New York, New York.

Foster, A.S., and Gifford, E.M. 1974. Comparative morphology of vascular plants, 2nd ed. W.H. Freeman and Company, San Francisco.

Simpson, M.G. 2010. Plant systematics, 2^nd ed. Academic Press, Burlington, Massachusetts.

General paleobotany

Stewart, W.N., and G.W. Rothwell. 1993. Paleobotany and the evolution of plants, 2nd ed. Cambridge University Press.

Taylor, T.N., E.L. Taylor, and M. Krings. 2009. Paleobotany, the Biology and Evolution of Fossil Plants, 2nd ed. Academic Press.

Paleobotany websites

* Arens, C. [later upated by N.C. Arens, C. Strömberg, and A. Thompson.] 1998. Virtual Paleobotany Lab. University of California Museum of Paleontology, Berkeley, California. https://ucmp.berkeley.edu/IB181/HpageIB181.html

* Boyer, J. 2019. Plant evolution & paleobotany. https://sites.google.com/site/paleoplant/

* Paleobotany [online lab, University of Alberta, author not credited; images with minimal text]: https://grad.biology.ualberta.ca/paleobotany/

* Steur, H. 2019. Hans' paleobotany pages. https://steurh.home.xs4all.nl/home.html#inhoud

Online exhibits

* Paleo garden exhibit, KU Natural History Museum: https://spark.adobe.com/page/YxdNe1fh6UFAV/

Content usage

Usage of text and images created for DEAL: Text on this page was written by Elizabeth J. Hermsen. Original written content created by E.J. Hermsen for the Digital Encyclopedia of Ancient Life that appears on this page is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Original images created by E.J. Hermsen are also licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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Page last updated: 4 December 2020.