Plant life

Plants Temporal range: Mesoproterozoic–present Had'n Archean Proterozoic Pha.
Scientific classification
Domain:	Eukaryota
(unranked):	Archaeplastida
Kingdom:	Plantae sensu Copeland, 1956
Divisions
†Nematophytes Chlorophyta Palmophyllales Prasinophyceae Nephroselmidophyceae Pseudoscourfieldiales Pyramimonadophyceae Mamiellophyceae Scourfieldiales Pedinophyceae Chlorodendrophyceae Trebouxiophyceae Ulvophyceae Chlorophyceae Streptophyta s.l. Chlorokybophyta Mesostigmatophyta Klebsormidiophyta Charophyta (stoneworts) Chaetosphaeridiales Coleochaetophyta Zygnematophyta Embryophyta (land plants)
Synonyms
Viridiplantae Cavalier-Smith 1981 Chlorobionta Jeffrey 1982, emend. Bremer 1985, emend. Lewis and McCourt 2004 Chlorobiota Kenrick and Crane 1997 Chloroplastida Adl et al., 2005 Phyta Barkley 1939 emed. Holt & Uidica 2007 Cormophyta Endlicher, 1836 Cormobionta Rothmaler, 1948 Euplanta Barkley, 1949 Telomobionta Takhtajan, 1964 Embryobionta Cronquist et al., 1966 Metaphyta Whittaker, 1969

Plants are mainly multicellular, predominantly photosynthetic eukaryotes of the kingdom Plantae.

The term is today generally limited to the green plants, which form an unranked clade Viridiplantae (Latin for "green plants"). This includes the flowering plants, conifers and other gymnosperms, ferns, clubmosses, hornworts, liverworts, mosses and the green algae, and excludes the red and brown algae. Historically, plants formed one of two kingdoms covering all living things that were not animals, and both algae and fungi were treated as plants; however all current definitions of "plant" exclude the fungi and some algae, as well as the prokaryotes (the archaea and bacteria).

Green plants have cell walls containing cellulose and obtain most of their energy from sunlight via photosynthesis by primary chloroplasts, derived from endosymbiosis with cyanobacteria. Their chloroplasts contain chlorophylls a and b, which gives them their green color. Some plants are parasitic and have lost the ability to produce normal amounts of chlorophyll or to photosynthesize. Plants are characterized by sexual reproduction and alternation of generations, although asexual reproduction is also common.