Flowers are a fairly recent thing, on the earth's time scale at least. Long before flowering plants like the Trillium and Tulip Tree, there were mosses, ferns, fungi, algae and lichen. These plants still produce new plants, but in different ways.
Click on a word below to learn a little about each one...
Mosses are primitive plants that have been on Earth for a very long time. They don't have flowers, but have 2 different phases of life - one for producing spores (new mosses) and one as an adult moss that photosynthesizes food from sunlight.
Mosses have one problem: they dry out very quickly. They have adapted to putting a jacket around their spores so they will live longer.
Click here for a picture of moss.
Lichens are the strange dry flat things you see growing on rocks and trees. They are actually 2 living things put together - fungi living together with algae. The algae use chlorophyll to make food, and the fungi provides the place to live and avoid the nasty environment. This is called a symbiotic relationship.
Because they are so 'tough' and tolerate all sorts of conditions in the environment, they can live almost anywhere. They can be found growing very far up in northern Canada or deep in the ocean where not much else lives.
Lichens reproduce by splitting their cells in half to make a new daughter cell.
Click here for a photo of lichens.
While most plants we see belong to the Plant Kingdom, Fungi (pronounced Fun-gee) have their very own Fungi Kingdom and have about 77 000 different species!. Many people call them plants, but they are not plants or animals. They often are found living together with plants in symbiosis.
Fungi don't have flowers, but they still reproduce and make new fungi. They have filaments (sort of stringy long bits) that are tighly packed together in heads (called hyphae). This is the mushroom head you see. They produce spores which are released and grow into new fungi.
Next time you eat a mushroom or see one growing, have a close look at the cap on top. Can you see the filaments?
Click here for a picture of a fungus.
Ferns are also primitive plants that used to grow very tall with long leaves called fronds. They still grow in hot wet places like the tropics. They have 2 phases of life - one that produces spores and the other that grows and synthesizes food using light.
Next time you see a fern, turn the frond over and see if you can find the tiny round parts that produce spores.
Click here for a picture of a fern.
Algae (pronounced al-gee) can be just one cell, or made up of lots of cells. Have you ever heard of plankton in the ocean? Lots of plankton (meaning wander in Latin) are single-celled algae. Green algae is the only kind of algae in the Plant Kingdom. Remember talking about why plants are green? Well, green algae is the only kind with chlorophyll and can make its own food.
It reproduces by dividing its cell and making a clone of itself.
Click here for a picture of algae.
On the next pages...Alien Invasion
