Page 114 - Ultimate Visual Dictionary (DK)

PLANTS

Plant varieties FLOWERING PLANT
Bromeliad
(Acanthostachys strobilacea)
Leaf
THERE ARE MORE THAN 300,000 SPECIES of plant.
They show a wide diversity of forms and life-styles, ranging, for example,
from delicate liverworts, adapted for life in a damp habitat, to cacti, capable of surviving
in the desert, and from herbaceous plants, such as corn, which completes its life-cycle in one year,
to the giant redwood tree, which can live for thousands of years. This diversity reflects the adaptations
of plants to survive in a wide range of habitats. This is seen most clearly in the flowering plants (phylum
Angiospermophyta), which are the most numerous, with over 250,000 species, and the most widespread,
being found from the tropics to the poles. Despite their diversity, plants share certain characteristics: typically,
plants are green, and make their food by photosynthesis; and most plants live in or on a substrate, such as
soil, and do not actively move. Algae (kingdom Protista) and fungi (kingdom Fungi) have
some plantlike characteristics and are often studied alongside plants, although they
GREEN ALGA
Micrograph of desmid are not true plants.
(Micrasterias sp.)
FERN
Tree fern
(Dicksonia antarctica)

Pyrenoid
(small protein
body)

Chloroplast

Sinus Cell wall Rachis
(division between (main axis
two halves of cell) of pinnate leaf)
BRYOPHYTE
Moss Petiole
(Bryum sp.) Seta (leaf stalk)
(stalk)
Immature capsule
Ramentum
(brown scale)
Sporophyte
(spore- Base of dead Trunk
producing Capsule frond (leaf)
plant) (site of spore
production)
Adventitious
root
“Leaf” Gametophyte
(gamete-producing
plant) Epiphytic
fern growing
at base

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