Spermatophytes
| Seed plants Temporal range: Devonian? or earlier to recent |
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| Welwitschia mirabilis a member of the Gnetophyta | |
| Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Plantae |
| Subkingdom: | Embryophyta |
| (unranked): | Spermatophyta |
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The spermatophytes (from the Greek word Σπερματόφυτα), also known as phanerogams or phenogamae, comprise those plants that produce seeds, hence the alternative name seed plants. They are a subset of the embryophytes or land plants. The term phanerogams or phanerogamae is derived from the Greek , phanerós meaning "visible", in contrast to the cryptogamae from Greek kryptós = "hidden" together with the suffix , gameein, "to marry". These terms distinguished those plants with hidden sexual organs (cryptogamae) from those with visible sexual organs (phanerogamae).
The living spermatophytes form five groups, the first four of which were traditionally grouped as "gymnosperms":
In addition to the taxa listed above, the fossil (old creature) record contains evidence of many extinct taxa of seed plants. The so-called "seed ferns" (Pteridospermae) were one of the earliest successful groups of land plants, and forests dominated by seed ferns were prevalent in the late Paleozoic. Glossopteris was the most prominent tree genus in the ancient southern supercontinent of Gondwana during the Permian period. By the Triassic period, seed ferns had declined in ecological importance, and representatives of modern gymnosperm groups were abundant and dominant through the end of the Cretaceous, when angiosperms radiated.
A whole genome duplication event in the ancestor of seed plants occurred about 319 million years ago. This gave rise to a series of evolutionary changes that resulted in the origin of seed plants.
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