Whether you are a beginner or an experienced gardener, you would have heard about plants and their characteristics. There are many books that explain about various aspects of plants. In fact, reading and understanding about plant are an important part of gardening. This article will help you understand about some simple concepts related to plant growth.
Most of living organisms are reliant on plants for food. Plants differ from animals cell walls present in plants are missing. Plants mainly are unicellular in nature unlike animals which are multicellular in their life. Plants have large number of cells, which make them different from animals.
One of the most common facts about plant kingdom is about its sexual reproduction. Many types of algae reproduce by sexual reproduction. Actually, this is the only way that plants can reproduce by either one of the two methods. The first method is called Photosynthesis. All plants need sunlight for photosynthesis and algae are no exception.
The second method is called respiration. Plants have no cell walls. However, they are surrounded by a thin layer of a cell containing sugar, which is known as the xylem. The xylem contains a stair-like pattern of cell walls. The stair-like cell walls of plants are known as stamen.
Many people know about the plant kingdom, but many are not aware of the fact that there are two types of animals that belong to the plant kingdom. One is cryptogamae. It is also commonly known as Coccidura. The other is cryptococcus. Both these two types of algae have very few cell walls and both have very small, unique sexual reproductive organs.
Cryptogamae is the common name for the various types of green algae that are present in water. These include watercress, water lettuce, hypokalemia, hyperchlorophyllia, hypoglycemia, ornithoplasties, olein and panicles. Among all the classifications of algae, it is the Cryptogamae that is the oldest with the oldest fossils found being from the Cretaceous period.
A few examples of the type of algae that are part of the plant kingdom are algae, gymnema, protista, prothallium, semolina, spathioplankton and others. Algae have different names in different parts of the world. For example, in Australia the common name for cryptogamae is brown alga. In Europe the common name is bluer alga while in Asia the common name is wakame. In North America, the most common name is plankton while in Australia it is seaweed.
As discussed earlier the two types of algae belong to the same kingdom, but they are classified differently. Cryptogamae are classified as the common ancestor of all multicellular plants. Protista are classified as the direct descendants of the algae that are already in the animal form such as the clams, bivalves and corals. All the types of algae belong to the Kingdom Protista, although it is a misnomer that they all belong to the same kingdom because there are significant differences between them.
Algae are classified in three basic families. These are theophyllous, phytoplankton and xylan-fulvoplankton. Theophyllous means that the plant derives its nourishment from sunlight while the phytoplankton derives its nourishment from the water. Phytoplankton is classified as a prokaryotic cell, which is a cell with a nucleus in the cell wall and needs oxygen for survival. Xylan-fulvoplankton is the only eukaryotic cell that has its own nucleus. Therefore all the other algae belong to the phytoplankton family.
Algae can be classified in three different forms. There are gymnasts, gametes and zoospores. There are also forms that are sexual and those that are asexual. Algae can reproduce both sexually and asexually.
Algae are characterized by a set of reproductive features. All the forms have the ability to form spores and there are three types of spores. Spores are round in shape and contain a protein coat that helps them adhere to sand or gravel. They are commonly known as planospores. Other types of spores are also sporegenerates that contain DNA in their structure and are a form of sexual reproduction.
A type of plant body is the sporophyte. It is also known as a root-like projection that has a cell wall and a cell stem and sometimes even a stalk. The cell wall of the sporophyte is called a plastid and it is surrounded by a network of vascular tissues. The vascular tissues carry oxygen to the roots as they grow. The structure of a plant body is similar to that of a typical tree.