Vascular plant

A plant with specialized transport tissues: xylem moves water and minerals, while phloem distributes sugars and other organic compounds. Vascular tissue enables efficient transport and supports larger, more complex growth.

Xylem: Plant vascular tissue that conducts water and dissolved minerals, chiefly from roots toward shoots. Its water-conducting cells form one of the two defining vascular tissues.
Cohesion-tension theory: The explanation that water rises through xylem as transpiration creates tension in a continuous, cohesive water column. It accounts for long-distance water movement through the plant.
Cooksonia: An extinct genus of small, branching vascular plants known from Silurian and Devonian fossils. Its fossils preserve early examples of vascular plants with simple branching shoots.
Bryophyte: A nonvascular land plant lineage that includes mosses, liverworts, and hornworts. Bryophytes lack the true xylem and phloem that define vascular plants.
Phloem: Plant vascular tissue that transports sugars and other organic compounds between sources and sinks. It distributes products of photosynthesis throughout the plant.
Pressure-flow hypothesis: The model that sugar loading and unloading create pressure differences driving bulk flow through phloem. It explains how phloem transports sugars from sources to sinks.
Rhyniophyte: An extinct group of early vascular plants with simple branching axes and terminal sporangia. Rhyniophytes illustrate the modest architecture of early vascular plants.
Seed plant: A vascular plant that reproduces using seeds rather than spores alone. Seed plants are a major vascular lineage with reproduction adapted to life on land.
Lignin: A complex structural polymer deposited in plant cell walls, adding rigidity and resistance to decay. Lignified xylem walls help conduct water while supporting upright growth.
Vascular cambium: A lateral meristem that produces secondary xylem inward and secondary phloem outward. Its activity thickens stems and roots in woody vascular plants.

Linked from 29 pages