6.1 Module 6.2: the plant kingdom

Plants are a large and varied group of organisms. There are close to 300,000 species of catalogued plants. ^{A.D. Chapman (2009) Numbers of Living Species in Australia and the World . 2nd edition. A Report for the Australian Biological Resources Study. Australian Biodiversity Information Services, Toowoomba, Australia. Available online at http://www.environment.gov.au/biodiversity/abrs/publications/other/species-numbers/2009/04-03-groups-plants.html.} 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.

Plant adaptations to life on land

As organisms adapt to life on land, they have to contend with several challenges in the terrestrial environment. Water has been described as “the stuff of life.” The cell’s interior—the medium in which most small molecules dissolve and diffuse, and in which the majority of the chemical reactions of metabolism take place—is a watery soup. Desiccation, or drying out, is a constant danger for an organism exposed to air. Even when parts of a plant are close to a source of water, their aerial structures are likely to dry out. Water provides buoyancy to organisms that live in aquatic habitats. On land, plants need to develop structural support in air—a medium that does not give the same lift. Additionally, the male gametes must reach the female gametes using new strategies because swimming is no longer possible. Finally, both gametes and zygotes must be protected from drying out. The successful land plants evolved strategies to deal with all of these challenges, although not all adaptations appeared at once. Some species did not move far from an aquatic environment, whereas others left the water and went on to conquer the driest environments on Earth.

To balance these survival challenges, life on land offers several advantages. First, sunlight is abundant. On land, the spectral quality of light absorbed by the photosynthetic pigment, chlorophyll, is not filtered out by water or competing photosynthetic species in the water column above. Second, carbon dioxide is more readily available because its concentration is higher in air than in water. Additionally, land plants evolved before land animals; therefore, until dry land was colonized by animals, no predators threatened the well-being of plants. This situation changed as animals emerged from the water and found abundant sources of nutrients in the established flora. In turn, plants evolved strategies to deter predation: from spines and thorns to toxic chemicals.