Gardening Can Be Confusing, All Those Varieties, Latin Names and Techniques. Its Why I wrote My Gardening Dictionary And Why I like This Map Of Plants Video.
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Plants have been around for millions of years. This video, made with Kew Botanic Garden, explains how various plants evolved and are related.
For example did you know an oak tree is more closely related to a pumpkin than a pine tree?
Other things the video explains are that ….
Plants are classified based on their evolutionary history. This means that plants that share a more recent common ancestor are more closely related to each other.
The oldest plants on Earth are algae. Algae are a diverse group of organisms that come in many different shapes and sizes, but they all share the ability to photosynthesize.
Land plants evolved from green algae. The first land plants appeared about 470 million years ago. They were small and simple, but they eventually gave rise to all the different types of plants that we see today.
There are two main groups of land plants: vascular plants and non-vascular plants. Vascular plants have a system of tubes that transport water and nutrients throughout their bodies. Non-vascular plants do not have this system, so they are typically smaller and simpler.
Vascular plants can be further divided into two groups: gymnosperms and angiosperms.
Angiosperms are the most diverse group of plants on Earth. They include all those we often regard as flowering plants, as well as many other types of plants, such as grasses, trees, and vegetables (which also flower of course, but not always so obviously).
