Learning Objectives
By the end of this section, you will be able to:
- Describe the major characteristics of the plant kingdom
- Discuss the challenges to plant life on land
- Describe the adaptations that allowed plants to colonize land
Plants are a large and varied group of organisms. There are close to 300,000 species of catalogued plants. 1 Of these, about 260,000 are plants that produce seeds. Mosses, ferns, conifers, and flowering plants are all members of the plant kingdom. The plant kingdom contains mostly photosynthetic organisms; a few parasitic forms have lost the ability to photosynthesize. The process of photosynthesis uses chlorophyll, which is located in organelles called chloroplasts. Plants possess cell walls containing cellulose. Most plants reproduce sexually, but they also have diverse methods of asexual reproduction. Plants exhibit indeterminate growth, meaning they do not have a final body form, but continue to grow body mass until they die.
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