The clubmosses and their relatives are the most ancient group of vascular plants — plants with specialized tissue called xylem that transports water and nutrients throughout the plant. The only plant ...

A new study, led by Hirofumi Nakagami at the Max Planck Institute for Plant Breeding Research in Cologne, Germany, demonstrates that one of the two branches of plant immunity was likely to have ...

During plant terrestrialization, plants evolved from being aquatic organisms to those that live on land, a crucial shift in shaping the planet’s ecosystems, biodiversity and climate. Symbiotic, or win ...

Vascular plants that moved back into the water did not simply shed complexity and shrink their genomes. New genomic work shows that many aquatic lineages instead rewire and expand key gene families, ...

Taxonomists, ecologists and philosophers explored the world's southernmost forest and tundra ecosystems to estimate the diversity of the dominant vegetation, namely tiny bryophytes and lichens. Much ...

Never underestimate moss. When the simple plants first arrived on land, almost half a billion years ago, they triggered both an ice age and a mass extinction of ocean life. The first land plants ...