In the world they inhabit millions of plants of all kinds, and all of them have had an evolutionary history that has been more or less complicated depending on the changes that the habitat in which they live has undergone. These changes have made them more resistant, but they have also sometimes forced them to evolve, to modify some of their characteristics in order to live better at home.
The well-known human being is that he needs to have everything classified, he needs everything to have a name that can be used to talk about it. The plant world is no exception. Thus, today we have a plant classification which is what helps us to identify them.
How are plants classified?
Plants belong to the great kingdom Plantae, which is divided into two: non-flowering plants and flowering plants.
Plants without flower
They were the first to appear on Earth, more specifically in the oceans more than 4.000 million years ago. This group is further divided into 3 others:
- Bryophytes: mosses, liver plants, and hornworts.
- Pteridophytes: the ferns.
- Gymnosperms: conifers, Cycas and the tree of Ginkgo biloba. They are the only ones in their category that produce seed.
Flowering plants
These plants are much more "modern", although of course this "modern" is very relative: they appeared 130 million years ago, and since then they have not stopped evolving. They are known as angiosperm plants, and they are the ones that produce flowers that are usually very showy, and once they are pollinated, the seeds grow inside a fruit that protects them.
As examples of angiosperms we have orchids, jacaranda, fruit trees, bulbous plants, ..., in short, all those that have flowers.
I hope that from now on it will be easier for you to classify your plants 🙂.