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I have created this article as a stub. It greatly needs attention of a biologist or evolutionary expert. Nimur 20:52, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
The page has been moved by User:Curtis Clark to a more descriptive title of the actual content. However, please feel free to contribute "such things as plant speciation and population genetics" - which are relevant to the topic as a whole. Nimur 18:17, 22 May 2007 (UTC)
The article needs a more explicit definition of "plant": does it include cyanobacteria (as older classifications did), does it include green algae (which some current classifications do and some don't), or is it limited to land plants? Discussing the changing definitions of the term could be informative here as they are directly related to how things that have been called "plants" are related in an evolutionary sense, with modern classifications generally taking a much narrower (and explicitly phylogenetic) view. MrDarwin 14:09, 23 May 2007 (UTC)
I think this article is organized wrong. It should go by major evolutioniary innovations, photosynthesis, chloroplast, multicellular organisms, the move to land from fresh water, bryophyte like plants and spores, vascular tissue, wood, leaves, seeds, flowers. It's hard to write like this, and it just doesn't work well with how the evolutionary history of plants is studied. Does anyone object? Is anyone particularly wedded to the existing structure? I could write a different article about the history of evolutionary innovations that lead to the colonization and dominance of terrestial ecosystems by plants, I suppose. KP Botany 03:29, 31 May 2007 (UTC)
I intend to eventually have some input into this page, but may be a while about it. In the meantime, this paper is a useful review which could be very productively incorporated; drop me an e-mail if you're unable to access it and I'll let you in. Verisimilus T 17:07, 8 August 2007 (UTC)
The intro names three predominant aspects. Such prioritization is necessarily subjective. -- Etxrge ( talk) 08:54, 13 February 2008 (UTC)
Evolution is inherently a historical process. Therefore the word history is redundant in the present title. I therefore suggest that the name is changed to plant evolution.
For almost all of its history this article has had the internal name plant evolution and the external name evolutionary history of plants. I believe such a discrepancy is incorrect. When amending this problem I chose the name I found better, plant evolution. Encyclopetey found this action rude, see my discussion page, and chose the other name. I cannot see why it is rude to change the external name and OK to change the internal name (and the external name at the same time). I removed a discrepancy and had to make a choice to do this. Encyclopetey acted only to influence the choice. -- Etxrge ( talk) 08:05, 15 February 2008 (UTC)
Agreed with the first poster in this topic: the "history" in the title is redundant, makes the article title unnecessarily long, and is inconsistent with other Wikipedia article titles such as " evolution of mammals", " evolution of cetaceans", " evolution of dinosaurs," etc. I am therefore performing the move. — Lowellian ( reply) 19:16, 28 September 2009 (UTC)
Hi,
As per the cleanup tag on the article, I've had a little project running for a while to re-write this article to address the topic "The evolutionary history of plants". The pre-existing article, for what it's worth, is forked at Timeline of plant evolution, an article which I hope to focus my attention onto at a later point - so no contributions have been lost as a result of this re-write. I hope you'll find my article an improvement; I accept that it could still use some honing and re-wording in places, and I hope that the input of others will make it read a little more smoothly. I have, however, spent a considerable amount of time researching, structuring and formulating this article, so I would appreciate it if any major edits were discussed here before being implemented.
Thanks,
Smith609 Talk 19:33, 30 April 2008 (UTC)
What's a grade and why is the word so tentative that it is in quotes? Can't you use a word that doesn't have to be in quotes. It's as if the opening sentence is about saying something you're not sure of. An unfortunate start to an article. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 207.62.177.231 ( talk) 00:33, 6 May 2008 (UTC) Grade does mean something in evolutionary biology, but it means something different from what you are using. So it's confusing. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 207.62.177.231 ( talk) 00:34, 6 May 2008 (UTC)
This [2] was a strange reversion commentary. Isn't that what the article is about, the "evolutionary history of plants" according to "evolutionary theory?" I think I've fallen into Bizarro Wikipedia lately.
I'm not sure it belongs in the lead sentence or even the first paragraph, but this did not need to be reverted with a full on dismissal of "evolutionary theory" as opposed to the "factual" accuracy of this article. Both this article and evolutionary theory are based on facts, that fossils exist, that genes and environment are the source of variation. If this was a fringe theory attempt to introduce something adding "Evolutionary Theory" to the lead paragraph is hardly the way to do it. It seemed like a good faith edit to add an important point to the article. A reversion followed by a discussion of the appropriate place for linking to evolutionary theory in general (if it's not already linked, which seems unlikely) would have been more appropriate than such a strange dismissal of the very basis of the article. -- Blechnic ( talk) 07:11, 4 June 2008 (UTC)
This is a confusing statement. Its interpretation depends on what you take to mean "plant." Sensu Plant, "plant" is taken to mean land plants + green algae which is a common circumscription. But then there are multicellular plants without alternation of generations (Chara, for instance, has zygotic meiosis). If we take "plant" to mean just the land plants, then "multicellular" is redundant. Did the original source word it this way?-- ♦♦♦Vlmastra♦♦♦ ( talk) 21:44, 9 December 2008 (UTC)
This is a good read. But I am surprised that the "evolution of flowers" bit makes no mention of co-evolution with pollinators. Hesperian 05:13, 16 May 2009 (UTC)
I really do find the first paragraph somewhat problematic. As it's written, it seems to support the view of "evolution as a progression" from 'simple' to 'complex'. This is a widespread misconception which is specifically addressed at List_of_misconceptions#Evolution. Somehow it needs to be made clear that although more complex grades have evolved successively, this does not mean that every species is more 'advanced' or 'complex' than its ancestors. Parasitism, for example, has reduced complexity in plants like Rafflesia. The genus Cynomorium is hard to place partly because its morphology is so reduced, but this isn't a sign of a 'primitive' plant. Also, as noted later in the article, the modern view is that angiosperms and gymnosperms are sister groups, so it's even more misleading to write "through ... gymnosperms to the complex angiosperms of today".
Below is a suggested re-write. Comments please!
The evolution of plants has resulted in (NOT "occurred through") increasing
levels of complexity, from the earliest
algal mats, through
bryophytes,
lycopods and
ferns to the complex
gymnosperms and
angiosperms of today. While groups which evolved earlier (NOT "simple plants") continue to thrive, especially in the environments in which they originated, each new grade of organisation has eventually become more "successful" than its predecessors by most measures. Further, most cladistic analyses, where they agree, suggest that each "more complex" group arose from the most complex group at the time.
Peter coxhead ( talk) 13:50, 13 April 2010 (UTC)
A reference was recently added to this article using the Cite DOI template. The citation bot tried to expand the citation, but could not access the specified DOI. Please check that the DOI doi:10.1086/36839 has been correctly entered. If the DOI is correct, it is possible that it has not yet been entered into the CrossRef database. Please complete the reference by hand here. The script that left this message was unable to track down the user who added the citation; it may be prudent to alert them to this message. Thanks, Citation bot 2 ( talk) 14:53, 28 October 2010 (UTC)
Why does this article say nothing about aquatic plants (e.g. red algae, see Evolutionary history of life)? I would expect that these evolved before land plants. -- Philcha ( talk) 17:11, 10 January 2011 (UTC)
You might want to use the cladogram at Evolutionary history of life which shows that fungi and animals are fairly close but plants and related taxa are in a different branch of the eukaryotes. -- Philcha ( talk) 17:22, 10 January 2011 (UTC)
The template Ma is being used to specify a date (for C4 plants) of 6-7 mya, and links to the correct timeline display, but formats the text in this page as -1, giving the result "Miocene, -1 million" Lavateraguy ( talk) 11:16, 11 January 2011 (UTC)
The article claims "The most recent major innovation by the plants is the development of the C4 metabolic pathway." with no citation. I strongly doubt this statement to be true. -- EncycloPetey ( talk) 02:42, 11 March 2011 (UTC)
This article used to be about the evolutionary history of plants. It now seems to be full of plant anatomy, morphology, physiology, chemistry, etc. with brief discussions/mentions of evolution. As examples, see Evolutionary_history_of_plants#Factors influencing floral diversity and Evolutionary_history_of_plants#Flowering time. The article is also FAR too long, and needs to be split up.
It's impossible for editors collectively to maintain articles of the current size and complexity. Peter coxhead ( talk) 16:22, 12 March 2011 (UTC)
The result of the move request was: not moved, per consensus here that this move would not be the best way forward. ErikHaugen ( talk | contribs) 07:19, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
Evolutionary history of plants → Plant evolution — This article name points out a subtopic of plant evolution but contains a rather broad description of plant evolution. The article plant evolution on the other hand, is a rather poorly written stub. -- Ettrig ( talk) 11:55, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
I think the following statement about the effects of polyploidy requires more explanation: This allows relatively fast bursts of evolution to occur. How does polyploidy speed up evolution? Is it because half of the genes are freed to take up new functions or is it because the polyploid variant is reproductively isolated creating more species? This is what I came to think of. Maybe there are many more possibilities. We should tell the reader about how this works. -- Ettrig ( talk) 16:13, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
Hmm,... there already is section on polyploidy here... So I will bring it here. I wanted to bring the picture to the talk page and to the attention anyway. I wanted to notify myself (as task for future reference) or anyone else, that there is already interesting picture: File:PaleopolyploidyTree.jpg
with
WGDs/polyploidies denoted. As mentioned in Proost et al 2011
[1] and elsewhere, whole genome duplication have profound impact on evolution and development of plant body plan, so I thought it may become useful to have it here in one on eyes for some day.
Of course the usability might increase if some of us would crop it to plants only (potentially, lower plants and Streptophytes might be included on the other hand). Proost might become suitable reference for the possible update of the image too, if needed :) Reo + 15:01, 4 September 2011 (UTC)
The article says Plants were then faced with a balance, between transporting water as efficiently as possible and preventing transporting vessels to implode and cavitate. This assumes there is a conflict between the two. I find this conflict far from obvious. Could someone explain why efficient water transport would cause a risk of cavitation? -- Ettrig ( talk) 22:18, 18 March 2011 (UTC)
I realized that many of the images in the article are not placed next to the relevant text. I'm going to modify the placement of some images in the coming days, unless anyone strongly feels otherwise. Also I agree with the discussion here that the article is rather too long and needs to be split up. The previous Plant evolutionary developmental biology article was written with a largely molecular perspective while this had a more of paleobotanic perspective. Because of the haphazard merging, the flow between different paragraphs is quite choppy. I think the two articles need to be kept separate and tightened up. Veryhuman ( talk) 15:32, 31 May 2011 (UTC)
Heterosporic organisms, as their name suggests, bear spores of two sizes – microspores and megaspores. These would germinate to form microgametophytes and megagametophytes, respectively. This system paved the way for seeds: taken to the extreme, the megasporangia could bear only a single megaspore tetrad, and to complete the transition to true seeds, three of the megaspores in the original tetrad could be aborted, leaving one megaspore per megasporangium. (NEEDS CLARIFICATION IN REGULAR ENGLISH)
I didn't write this comment, but agree. -- Ettrig ( talk) 16:48, 14 November 2011 (UTC)
Actually, more generally, the article needs a great deal of copy-editing to make it accessible to a general reader. At present many parts of it need detailed botanical knowledge to even begin to understand them (as an example the phrase "haplontic life cycle" appeared quite unexplained; I've just attempted to expand it a little). But this would make the article even longer, since mostly what is needed is more explanation of specialist terms. The sheer length of the article does put me off working on it. I thought that Ettrig was going to split it up (see discussion above). Peter coxhead ( talk) 17:56, 14 November 2011 (UTC)
This is taken from the Transitional fossil article. It might be useful to include in this article. However I have no idea where to put it.
A middle Devonian precursor to seed plants from Belgium has been identified predating the earliest seed plants by about 20 million years. Runcaria, small and radially symmetrical, is an integumented megasporangium surrounded by a cupule. The megasporangium bears an unopened distal extension protruding above the mutlilobed integument. It is suspected that the extension was involved in anemophilous pollination. Runcaria sheds new light on the sequence of character acquisition leading to the seed. Runcaria has all of the qualities of seed plants except for a solid seed coat and a system to guide the pollen to the seed. [1]
That may be too specific a piece of information to add here, but work certainly work in the Seed plant article. -- EncycloPetey ( talk) 19:45, 19 February 2012 (UTC)
References
The following sentence was added by User:69.90.2.114:
Referenced to:
I do not have access to the paper so I can't look into it for clarification. In the meantime, I can not, for the life of me comprehend the context or meaning of the sentence. 69.90.2.114, do you mean Wattieza, the earliest woody ferns in general, or the earliest woody plants all in all? How does that sentence relate to the previous sentence? Indeed it looks completely contradictory.-- OBSIDIAN† SOUL 01:01, 4 March 2012 (UTC)
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A common (sort of) and important process in plant evolution is when there arises a variant of a species that has double the number of chromosomes compared to the mother species. New species arise in this way. I thought this was called "chromosome duplication" or "genome duplication", but find that in this article it is called "polyploidy". In my view polyploidy is a result of the process but not the process in itself. Evolution is the things that happen. These duplications happen now and then and the results have far-reaching and interesting effects. "Polyploidy" does not denote what happened but the outcome of what happened. What is the proper term for this process of duplicating the whole genome? I think we should have an article about it? -- Ettrig ( talk) 16:01, 29 June 2012 (UTC)
in the Xylem section the article states "The first macrofossils to bear water-transport tubes in situ are the early Devonian pretracheophytes Aglaophyton and Horneophyton". This is not correct. The date of the Aglaophyton and Horneophyton fossils is rather late, latest lower Devonian, but both Cooksonia grade and lycopod fossils are known from the Silurian, as much as 30 million years earlier. Also, what is the meaning of in situ in this sentence. Plantsurfer ( talk) 13:58, 2 November 2012 (UTC)
Hi, There is a thread here you may be interested in, about a consistent naming for articles dealing with evolution of taxa. Thanks! -- Cyclopia talk 17:07, 26 November 2012 (UTC)
This sentence needs a bit of clarification - "Vascular tissue also facilitated upright growth without the support of water and paved the way for the evolution of larger plants on land." If true, why do vascular plants wilt? Plantsurfer ( talk) 16:22, 26 July 2014 (UTC)
The article waffles on about early plant wicking water along their cell walls, but says nothing at all about the critical importance of their association with arbuscular fungi which without doubt facilitated water and mineral nutrient acquisition in early rootless plants transitioning to land. Then at the end there is an unfocussed and off-topic essay on "Coevolution of plants and fungal parasites" that says much on fine-detail interactions and process but nothing much on evolutionary history, which is the topic of the article. I propose that this section be radically shortened, and a new section added giving the important story of the association between plants and Glomalean fungi. Plantsurfer 23:06, 12 April 2018 (UTC)
This article is about evolutionary history, but some of the material in it, in particular the section "Coevolution of plants and fungal parasites", is more about evolutionary process and contributes little to understanding of evolutionary history. My personal view is that this section would be a better fit to the article Plant evolution. Would it be acceptable to the editors to move "Coevolution of plants and fungal parasites" into Plant evolution. Plantsurfer 15:12, 13 April 2018 (UTC)
The mechanisms and players section of the article does a great job explaining many factors that lead to evolutionary change in plants. However, I feel that it leaves out one important aspect: interaction with other organisms. In plants, a common driver of evolutionary change is fungi. As a specific example, parasitic fungi have been found to cause evolutionary change in plants as plants with greater defenses against the parasite are selected for in a population. The fungal species continues to evolve alongside the plant species in an attempt to gain an advantage over another species. Stephenoff.2 ( talk) 20:55, 1 October 2014 (UTC)
Be warned that there's an anonymous editor making edits like this to plant articles, adding references to the "The Flowering Leaf Theory" based on one primary source (in a journal called The Osprey). Peter coxhead ( talk) 15:28, 29 January 2019 (UTC)
Hello @
FriendofRafid: I assume a 2021 study
does not refer to Žárský which is a 2022 review. I simply want to be certain about the phrasing because a small difference makes a large difference.
Invasive Spices (
talk) 28 February 2022 (UTC)
This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 8 January 2024 and 20 April 2024. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Ariabeth ( article contribs).
— Assignment last updated by Warmedforbs ( talk) 01:24, 18 April 2024 (UTC)
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I have created this article as a stub. It greatly needs attention of a biologist or evolutionary expert. Nimur 20:52, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
The page has been moved by User:Curtis Clark to a more descriptive title of the actual content. However, please feel free to contribute "such things as plant speciation and population genetics" - which are relevant to the topic as a whole. Nimur 18:17, 22 May 2007 (UTC)
The article needs a more explicit definition of "plant": does it include cyanobacteria (as older classifications did), does it include green algae (which some current classifications do and some don't), or is it limited to land plants? Discussing the changing definitions of the term could be informative here as they are directly related to how things that have been called "plants" are related in an evolutionary sense, with modern classifications generally taking a much narrower (and explicitly phylogenetic) view. MrDarwin 14:09, 23 May 2007 (UTC)
I think this article is organized wrong. It should go by major evolutioniary innovations, photosynthesis, chloroplast, multicellular organisms, the move to land from fresh water, bryophyte like plants and spores, vascular tissue, wood, leaves, seeds, flowers. It's hard to write like this, and it just doesn't work well with how the evolutionary history of plants is studied. Does anyone object? Is anyone particularly wedded to the existing structure? I could write a different article about the history of evolutionary innovations that lead to the colonization and dominance of terrestial ecosystems by plants, I suppose. KP Botany 03:29, 31 May 2007 (UTC)
I intend to eventually have some input into this page, but may be a while about it. In the meantime, this paper is a useful review which could be very productively incorporated; drop me an e-mail if you're unable to access it and I'll let you in. Verisimilus T 17:07, 8 August 2007 (UTC)
The intro names three predominant aspects. Such prioritization is necessarily subjective. -- Etxrge ( talk) 08:54, 13 February 2008 (UTC)
Evolution is inherently a historical process. Therefore the word history is redundant in the present title. I therefore suggest that the name is changed to plant evolution.
For almost all of its history this article has had the internal name plant evolution and the external name evolutionary history of plants. I believe such a discrepancy is incorrect. When amending this problem I chose the name I found better, plant evolution. Encyclopetey found this action rude, see my discussion page, and chose the other name. I cannot see why it is rude to change the external name and OK to change the internal name (and the external name at the same time). I removed a discrepancy and had to make a choice to do this. Encyclopetey acted only to influence the choice. -- Etxrge ( talk) 08:05, 15 February 2008 (UTC)
Agreed with the first poster in this topic: the "history" in the title is redundant, makes the article title unnecessarily long, and is inconsistent with other Wikipedia article titles such as " evolution of mammals", " evolution of cetaceans", " evolution of dinosaurs," etc. I am therefore performing the move. — Lowellian ( reply) 19:16, 28 September 2009 (UTC)
Hi,
As per the cleanup tag on the article, I've had a little project running for a while to re-write this article to address the topic "The evolutionary history of plants". The pre-existing article, for what it's worth, is forked at Timeline of plant evolution, an article which I hope to focus my attention onto at a later point - so no contributions have been lost as a result of this re-write. I hope you'll find my article an improvement; I accept that it could still use some honing and re-wording in places, and I hope that the input of others will make it read a little more smoothly. I have, however, spent a considerable amount of time researching, structuring and formulating this article, so I would appreciate it if any major edits were discussed here before being implemented.
Thanks,
Smith609 Talk 19:33, 30 April 2008 (UTC)
What's a grade and why is the word so tentative that it is in quotes? Can't you use a word that doesn't have to be in quotes. It's as if the opening sentence is about saying something you're not sure of. An unfortunate start to an article. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 207.62.177.231 ( talk) 00:33, 6 May 2008 (UTC) Grade does mean something in evolutionary biology, but it means something different from what you are using. So it's confusing. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 207.62.177.231 ( talk) 00:34, 6 May 2008 (UTC)
This [2] was a strange reversion commentary. Isn't that what the article is about, the "evolutionary history of plants" according to "evolutionary theory?" I think I've fallen into Bizarro Wikipedia lately.
I'm not sure it belongs in the lead sentence or even the first paragraph, but this did not need to be reverted with a full on dismissal of "evolutionary theory" as opposed to the "factual" accuracy of this article. Both this article and evolutionary theory are based on facts, that fossils exist, that genes and environment are the source of variation. If this was a fringe theory attempt to introduce something adding "Evolutionary Theory" to the lead paragraph is hardly the way to do it. It seemed like a good faith edit to add an important point to the article. A reversion followed by a discussion of the appropriate place for linking to evolutionary theory in general (if it's not already linked, which seems unlikely) would have been more appropriate than such a strange dismissal of the very basis of the article. -- Blechnic ( talk) 07:11, 4 June 2008 (UTC)
This is a confusing statement. Its interpretation depends on what you take to mean "plant." Sensu Plant, "plant" is taken to mean land plants + green algae which is a common circumscription. But then there are multicellular plants without alternation of generations (Chara, for instance, has zygotic meiosis). If we take "plant" to mean just the land plants, then "multicellular" is redundant. Did the original source word it this way?-- ♦♦♦Vlmastra♦♦♦ ( talk) 21:44, 9 December 2008 (UTC)
This is a good read. But I am surprised that the "evolution of flowers" bit makes no mention of co-evolution with pollinators. Hesperian 05:13, 16 May 2009 (UTC)
I really do find the first paragraph somewhat problematic. As it's written, it seems to support the view of "evolution as a progression" from 'simple' to 'complex'. This is a widespread misconception which is specifically addressed at List_of_misconceptions#Evolution. Somehow it needs to be made clear that although more complex grades have evolved successively, this does not mean that every species is more 'advanced' or 'complex' than its ancestors. Parasitism, for example, has reduced complexity in plants like Rafflesia. The genus Cynomorium is hard to place partly because its morphology is so reduced, but this isn't a sign of a 'primitive' plant. Also, as noted later in the article, the modern view is that angiosperms and gymnosperms are sister groups, so it's even more misleading to write "through ... gymnosperms to the complex angiosperms of today".
Below is a suggested re-write. Comments please!
The evolution of plants has resulted in (NOT "occurred through") increasing
levels of complexity, from the earliest
algal mats, through
bryophytes,
lycopods and
ferns to the complex
gymnosperms and
angiosperms of today. While groups which evolved earlier (NOT "simple plants") continue to thrive, especially in the environments in which they originated, each new grade of organisation has eventually become more "successful" than its predecessors by most measures. Further, most cladistic analyses, where they agree, suggest that each "more complex" group arose from the most complex group at the time.
Peter coxhead ( talk) 13:50, 13 April 2010 (UTC)
A reference was recently added to this article using the Cite DOI template. The citation bot tried to expand the citation, but could not access the specified DOI. Please check that the DOI doi:10.1086/36839 has been correctly entered. If the DOI is correct, it is possible that it has not yet been entered into the CrossRef database. Please complete the reference by hand here. The script that left this message was unable to track down the user who added the citation; it may be prudent to alert them to this message. Thanks, Citation bot 2 ( talk) 14:53, 28 October 2010 (UTC)
Why does this article say nothing about aquatic plants (e.g. red algae, see Evolutionary history of life)? I would expect that these evolved before land plants. -- Philcha ( talk) 17:11, 10 January 2011 (UTC)
You might want to use the cladogram at Evolutionary history of life which shows that fungi and animals are fairly close but plants and related taxa are in a different branch of the eukaryotes. -- Philcha ( talk) 17:22, 10 January 2011 (UTC)
The template Ma is being used to specify a date (for C4 plants) of 6-7 mya, and links to the correct timeline display, but formats the text in this page as -1, giving the result "Miocene, -1 million" Lavateraguy ( talk) 11:16, 11 January 2011 (UTC)
The article claims "The most recent major innovation by the plants is the development of the C4 metabolic pathway." with no citation. I strongly doubt this statement to be true. -- EncycloPetey ( talk) 02:42, 11 March 2011 (UTC)
This article used to be about the evolutionary history of plants. It now seems to be full of plant anatomy, morphology, physiology, chemistry, etc. with brief discussions/mentions of evolution. As examples, see Evolutionary_history_of_plants#Factors influencing floral diversity and Evolutionary_history_of_plants#Flowering time. The article is also FAR too long, and needs to be split up.
It's impossible for editors collectively to maintain articles of the current size and complexity. Peter coxhead ( talk) 16:22, 12 March 2011 (UTC)
The result of the move request was: not moved, per consensus here that this move would not be the best way forward. ErikHaugen ( talk | contribs) 07:19, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
Evolutionary history of plants → Plant evolution — This article name points out a subtopic of plant evolution but contains a rather broad description of plant evolution. The article plant evolution on the other hand, is a rather poorly written stub. -- Ettrig ( talk) 11:55, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
I think the following statement about the effects of polyploidy requires more explanation: This allows relatively fast bursts of evolution to occur. How does polyploidy speed up evolution? Is it because half of the genes are freed to take up new functions or is it because the polyploid variant is reproductively isolated creating more species? This is what I came to think of. Maybe there are many more possibilities. We should tell the reader about how this works. -- Ettrig ( talk) 16:13, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
Hmm,... there already is section on polyploidy here... So I will bring it here. I wanted to bring the picture to the talk page and to the attention anyway. I wanted to notify myself (as task for future reference) or anyone else, that there is already interesting picture: File:PaleopolyploidyTree.jpg
with
WGDs/polyploidies denoted. As mentioned in Proost et al 2011
[1] and elsewhere, whole genome duplication have profound impact on evolution and development of plant body plan, so I thought it may become useful to have it here in one on eyes for some day.
Of course the usability might increase if some of us would crop it to plants only (potentially, lower plants and Streptophytes might be included on the other hand). Proost might become suitable reference for the possible update of the image too, if needed :) Reo + 15:01, 4 September 2011 (UTC)
The article says Plants were then faced with a balance, between transporting water as efficiently as possible and preventing transporting vessels to implode and cavitate. This assumes there is a conflict between the two. I find this conflict far from obvious. Could someone explain why efficient water transport would cause a risk of cavitation? -- Ettrig ( talk) 22:18, 18 March 2011 (UTC)
I realized that many of the images in the article are not placed next to the relevant text. I'm going to modify the placement of some images in the coming days, unless anyone strongly feels otherwise. Also I agree with the discussion here that the article is rather too long and needs to be split up. The previous Plant evolutionary developmental biology article was written with a largely molecular perspective while this had a more of paleobotanic perspective. Because of the haphazard merging, the flow between different paragraphs is quite choppy. I think the two articles need to be kept separate and tightened up. Veryhuman ( talk) 15:32, 31 May 2011 (UTC)
Heterosporic organisms, as their name suggests, bear spores of two sizes – microspores and megaspores. These would germinate to form microgametophytes and megagametophytes, respectively. This system paved the way for seeds: taken to the extreme, the megasporangia could bear only a single megaspore tetrad, and to complete the transition to true seeds, three of the megaspores in the original tetrad could be aborted, leaving one megaspore per megasporangium. (NEEDS CLARIFICATION IN REGULAR ENGLISH)
I didn't write this comment, but agree. -- Ettrig ( talk) 16:48, 14 November 2011 (UTC)
Actually, more generally, the article needs a great deal of copy-editing to make it accessible to a general reader. At present many parts of it need detailed botanical knowledge to even begin to understand them (as an example the phrase "haplontic life cycle" appeared quite unexplained; I've just attempted to expand it a little). But this would make the article even longer, since mostly what is needed is more explanation of specialist terms. The sheer length of the article does put me off working on it. I thought that Ettrig was going to split it up (see discussion above). Peter coxhead ( talk) 17:56, 14 November 2011 (UTC)
This is taken from the Transitional fossil article. It might be useful to include in this article. However I have no idea where to put it.
A middle Devonian precursor to seed plants from Belgium has been identified predating the earliest seed plants by about 20 million years. Runcaria, small and radially symmetrical, is an integumented megasporangium surrounded by a cupule. The megasporangium bears an unopened distal extension protruding above the mutlilobed integument. It is suspected that the extension was involved in anemophilous pollination. Runcaria sheds new light on the sequence of character acquisition leading to the seed. Runcaria has all of the qualities of seed plants except for a solid seed coat and a system to guide the pollen to the seed. [1]
That may be too specific a piece of information to add here, but work certainly work in the Seed plant article. -- EncycloPetey ( talk) 19:45, 19 February 2012 (UTC)
References
The following sentence was added by User:69.90.2.114:
Referenced to:
I do not have access to the paper so I can't look into it for clarification. In the meantime, I can not, for the life of me comprehend the context or meaning of the sentence. 69.90.2.114, do you mean Wattieza, the earliest woody ferns in general, or the earliest woody plants all in all? How does that sentence relate to the previous sentence? Indeed it looks completely contradictory.-- OBSIDIAN† SOUL 01:01, 4 March 2012 (UTC)
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A common (sort of) and important process in plant evolution is when there arises a variant of a species that has double the number of chromosomes compared to the mother species. New species arise in this way. I thought this was called "chromosome duplication" or "genome duplication", but find that in this article it is called "polyploidy". In my view polyploidy is a result of the process but not the process in itself. Evolution is the things that happen. These duplications happen now and then and the results have far-reaching and interesting effects. "Polyploidy" does not denote what happened but the outcome of what happened. What is the proper term for this process of duplicating the whole genome? I think we should have an article about it? -- Ettrig ( talk) 16:01, 29 June 2012 (UTC)
in the Xylem section the article states "The first macrofossils to bear water-transport tubes in situ are the early Devonian pretracheophytes Aglaophyton and Horneophyton". This is not correct. The date of the Aglaophyton and Horneophyton fossils is rather late, latest lower Devonian, but both Cooksonia grade and lycopod fossils are known from the Silurian, as much as 30 million years earlier. Also, what is the meaning of in situ in this sentence. Plantsurfer ( talk) 13:58, 2 November 2012 (UTC)
Hi, There is a thread here you may be interested in, about a consistent naming for articles dealing with evolution of taxa. Thanks! -- Cyclopia talk 17:07, 26 November 2012 (UTC)
This sentence needs a bit of clarification - "Vascular tissue also facilitated upright growth without the support of water and paved the way for the evolution of larger plants on land." If true, why do vascular plants wilt? Plantsurfer ( talk) 16:22, 26 July 2014 (UTC)
The article waffles on about early plant wicking water along their cell walls, but says nothing at all about the critical importance of their association with arbuscular fungi which without doubt facilitated water and mineral nutrient acquisition in early rootless plants transitioning to land. Then at the end there is an unfocussed and off-topic essay on "Coevolution of plants and fungal parasites" that says much on fine-detail interactions and process but nothing much on evolutionary history, which is the topic of the article. I propose that this section be radically shortened, and a new section added giving the important story of the association between plants and Glomalean fungi. Plantsurfer 23:06, 12 April 2018 (UTC)
This article is about evolutionary history, but some of the material in it, in particular the section "Coevolution of plants and fungal parasites", is more about evolutionary process and contributes little to understanding of evolutionary history. My personal view is that this section would be a better fit to the article Plant evolution. Would it be acceptable to the editors to move "Coevolution of plants and fungal parasites" into Plant evolution. Plantsurfer 15:12, 13 April 2018 (UTC)
The mechanisms and players section of the article does a great job explaining many factors that lead to evolutionary change in plants. However, I feel that it leaves out one important aspect: interaction with other organisms. In plants, a common driver of evolutionary change is fungi. As a specific example, parasitic fungi have been found to cause evolutionary change in plants as plants with greater defenses against the parasite are selected for in a population. The fungal species continues to evolve alongside the plant species in an attempt to gain an advantage over another species. Stephenoff.2 ( talk) 20:55, 1 October 2014 (UTC)
Be warned that there's an anonymous editor making edits like this to plant articles, adding references to the "The Flowering Leaf Theory" based on one primary source (in a journal called The Osprey). Peter coxhead ( talk) 15:28, 29 January 2019 (UTC)
Hello @
FriendofRafid: I assume a 2021 study
does not refer to Žárský which is a 2022 review. I simply want to be certain about the phrasing because a small difference makes a large difference.
Invasive Spices (
talk) 28 February 2022 (UTC)
This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 8 January 2024 and 20 April 2024. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Ariabeth ( article contribs).
— Assignment last updated by Warmedforbs ( talk) 01:24, 18 April 2024 (UTC)