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What about the Simple Plants?. What are they?. Algae, seaweed, mosses, liverworts, club mosses, horsetails, and ferns. The most primitive (ancient) plants on Earth. The first plants on Earth lived in the seas.
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What are they? • Algae, seaweed, mosses, liverworts, club mosses, horsetails, and ferns. • The most primitive (ancient) plants on Earth. • The first plants on Earth lived in the seas. • The first land plants (mosses and liverworts) are about 500,000,000 years old! • Most are non-vascular plants. • All are non-seed, non-flowering plants.
Imagine what the Earth looked like before there were land plants! Life only existed in the seas.
Algae and Seaweeds • Algae - unicellular • Seaweeds - multicellular • The first plants on Earth! • Non-vascular plants (but some are large - can you explain that?) • How do algae reproduce? • How do seaweeds reproduce? • How are these plants useful?
Mosses, liverworts, and hornworts • They were the first land plants (about 500,000,000 years ago). • Also called Bryophytes • Non-vascular, non-seed. • How do they reproduce? • Why do they live in moist environments? • Why are they so small?
Ferns, Club Mosses, and Horsetails • The first vascular plants on Earth! (350,000,000 years ago). • Can grow much larger than non-vascular plants. Many species of tree ferns once existed. A few still do. • The first big forests were made of these plants. • But still no flowers or seeds: they reproduce by spores.
Imagine what the first forests looked like. These are the ancestors to all modern plants today.