Lesson Overview What is a Plant?

Characteristics of Plants
What do plants need to survive?

The lives of plants center on the need for sunlight, gas exchange, water, and
minerals.
Lesson Overview What is a Plant?

The Plant Kingdom

Plants are classified as members of the kingdom Plantae.

Plants are eukaryotes that have cell walls containing cellulose and carry out
photosynthesis using chlorophyll a and b.
Lesson Overview What is a Plant?

What Plants Need

All plants have the same basic

needs: sunlight, a way to exchange
gases with the surrounding air,
water, and minerals.
Lesson Overview What is a Plant?

Sunlight

Plants use the energy from

sunlight to carry out
photosynthesis.

Leaves are typically broad and flat

and are arranged on the stem so
as to maximize light absorption.
Lesson Overview What is a Plant?

Gas Exchange

Plants require oxygen to support

cellular respiration, as well as
carbon dioxide to carry out
photosynthesis.

Plants must exchange these gases

with the atmosphere and the soil
without losing excessive amounts
of water through evaporation.
Lesson Overview What is a Plant?

Water and Minerals

Land plants have evolved

structures that limit water loss and
speed the uptake of water from
the ground.

Minerals are nutrients in the soil

that are needed for plant growth.
Lesson Overview What is a Plant?

Many plants have specialized

tissues that carry water and
nutrients upward from the soil and
distribute the products of
photosynthesis throughout the
plant body.
Lesson Overview What is a Plant?

The History and Evolution of Plants

How did plants adapt to life on land?

Over time, the demands of life on land favored the evolution of plants more
resistant to the drying rays of the sun, more capable of conserving water, and
more capable of reproducing without water.
Lesson Overview What is a Plant?

Origins in the Water

The ancestors of today’s land plants were water-dwelling organisms similar to
today’s green algae.

Although not as large and complex as many plants, green algae have cell walls and
photosynthetic pigments that are identical to those of plants. Green algae also
have reproductive cycles that are similar to plants.

Studies of the genomes of green algae suggest that they are so closely related to
other plants that they should be considered part of the plant kingdom.
Lesson Overview What is a Plant?

The First Land Plants

The greatest challenge that early land plants
faced was obtaining water.
They met this challenge by growing close to
the ground in damp locations.

Fossils suggest the first true plants were still

dependent on water to complete their life
cycles. One of the earliest fossil vascular
plants was Cooksonia, shown here.
Lesson Overview What is a Plant?

The First Land Plants

Several groups of plants evolved from the first land plants.

One group developed into mosses.

Another lineage gave rise to ferns, cone-bearing plants, and flowering plants.
Lesson Overview What is a Plant?

An Overview of the Plant Kingdom

Botanists divide the plant kingdom into five major groups based on four important
features: embryo formation, specialized water-conducting tissues, seeds, and
flowers.
Lesson Overview What is a Plant?

An Overview of the Plant Kingdom

The relationship of plant groups is shown below
Lesson Overview What is a Plant?

The Plant Life Cycle

What feature defines most plant life cycles?

The life cycle of land plants has two alternating phases, a diploid (2N) phase and a
haploid (N) phase.
Lesson Overview What is a Plant?

The Plant Life Cycle

The life cycle of land plants has two alternating phases, a diploid (2N) phase and a
haploid (N) phase.

The shift between the haploid phase and the diploid phase is known as the
alternation of generations, as shown in the figure.
Lesson Overview What is a Plant?

The Plant Life Cycle

The multicellular diploid phase is known as the sporophyte, or spore-producing
plant.
Lesson Overview What is a Plant?

The Plant Life Cycle

The multicellular haploid phase is known as the gametophyte, or gamete-
producing plant.
Lesson Overview What is a Plant?

The Plant Life Cycle

A sporophyte produces haploid spores through meiosis. These spores grow into
multicellular structures called gametophytes.
Lesson Overview What is a Plant?

The Plant Life Cycle

Each gametophyte produces reproductive cells called gametes—sperm and egg
cells.

During fertilization, a sperm and egg fuse with each other, producing a diploid
zygote that develops into a new sporophyte.
Lesson Overview What is a Plant?

Trends in Plant Evolution

An important trend in plant evolution is the reduction in size of the gametophyte
and the increasing size of the sporophyte.