Botany
Botany called plant science, plant biology or phytology, is the science of plant life and a branch of biology. A botanist, plant scientist or phytologist is a scientist; the term "botany" comes from the Ancient Greek word βοτάνη meaning "pasture", "grass", or "fodder". Traditionally, botany has included the study of fungi and algae by mycologists and phycologists with the study of these three groups of organisms remaining within the sphere of interest of the International Botanical Congress. Nowadays, botanists study 410,000 species of land plants of which some 391,000 species are vascular plants, 20,000 are bryophytes. Botany originated in prehistory as herbalism with the efforts of early humans to identify – and cultivate – edible and poisonous plants, making it one of the oldest branches of science. Medieval physic gardens attached to monasteries, contained plants of medical importance, they were forerunners of the first botanical gardens attached to universities, founded from the 1540s onwards.
One of the earliest was the Padua botanical garden. These gardens facilitated the academic study of plants. Efforts to catalogue and describe their collections were the beginnings of plant taxonomy, led in 1753 to the binomial system of Carl Linnaeus that remains in use to this day. In the 19th and 20th centuries, new techniques were developed for the study of plants, including methods of optical microscopy and live cell imaging, electron microscopy, analysis of chromosome number, plant chemistry and the structure and function of enzymes and other proteins. In the last two decades of the 20th century, botanists exploited the techniques of molecular genetic analysis, including genomics and proteomics and DNA sequences to classify plants more accurately. Modern botany is a broad, multidisciplinary subject with inputs from most other areas of science and technology. Research topics include the study of plant structure and differentiation, reproduction and primary metabolism, chemical products, diseases, evolutionary relationships and plant taxonomy.
Dominant themes in 21st century plant science are molecular genetics and epigenetics, which are the mechanisms and control of gene expression during differentiation of plant cells and tissues. Botanical research has diverse applications in providing staple foods, materials such as timber, rubber and drugs, in modern horticulture and forestry, plant propagation and genetic modification, in the synthesis of chemicals and raw materials for construction and energy production, in environmental management, the maintenance of biodiversity. Botany originated as the study and use of plants for their medicinal properties. Many records of the Holocene period date early botanical knowledge as far back as 10,000 years ago; this early unrecorded knowledge of plants was discovered in ancient sites of human occupation within Tennessee, which make up much of the Cherokee land today. The early recorded history of botany includes many ancient writings and plant classifications. Examples of early botanical works have been found in ancient texts from India dating back to before 1100 BC, in archaic Avestan writings, in works from China before it was unified in 221 BC.
Modern botany traces its roots back to Ancient Greece to Theophrastus, a student of Aristotle who invented and described many of its principles and is regarded in the scientific community as the "Father of Botany". His major works, Enquiry into Plants and On the Causes of Plants, constitute the most important contributions to botanical science until the Middle Ages seventeen centuries later. Another work from Ancient Greece that made an early impact on botany is De Materia Medica, a five-volume encyclopedia about herbal medicine written in the middle of the first century by Greek physician and pharmacologist Pedanius Dioscorides. De Materia Medica was read for more than 1,500 years. Important contributions from the medieval Muslim world include Ibn Wahshiyya's Nabatean Agriculture, Abū Ḥanīfa Dīnawarī's the Book of Plants, Ibn Bassal's The Classification of Soils. In the early 13th century, Abu al-Abbas al-Nabati, Ibn al-Baitar wrote on botany in a systematic and scientific manner. In the mid-16th century, "botanical gardens" were founded in a number of Italian universities – the Padua botanical garden in 1545 is considered to be the first, still in its original location.
These gardens continued the practical value of earlier "physic gardens" associated with monasteries, in which plants were cultivated for medical use. They supported the growth of botany as an academic subject. Lectures were given about the plants grown in the gardens and their medical uses demonstrated. Botanical gardens came much to northern Europe. Throughout this period, botany remained subordinate to medicine. German physician Leonhart Fuchs was one of "the three German fathers of botany", along with theologian Otto Brunfels and physician Hieronymus Bock. Fuchs and Brunfels broke away from the tradition of copying earlier works to make original observations of their own. Bock created his own system of plant classification. Physician Valerius Cordus authored a botanically and pharmacologically important herbal Historia Plantarum in 1544 and a pharmacopoeia of lasting importance, the Dispensatorium
Banksia
Banksia is a genus of around 170 species in the plant family Proteaceae. These Australian wildflowers and popular garden plants are recognised by their characteristic flower spikes and fruiting "cones" and heads. Banksias range in size from prostrate woody shrubs to trees up to 30 metres tall, they are found in a wide variety of landscapes. Heavy producers of nectar, banksias are a vital part of the food chain in the Australian bush, they are an important food source for all sorts of nectarivorous animals, including birds, rats, stingless bees and a host of invertebrates. Furthermore, they are of economic importance to Australia's cut flower industries; however these plants are threatened by a number of processes including land clearing, frequent burning and disease, a number of species are rare and endangered. Banksias grow as trees or woody shrubs. Trees of the largest species, B. integrifolia and B. seminuda grow over 15 metres tall, some grow to standing 30 metres tall. Banksia species that grow as shrubs are erect, but there are several species that are prostrate, with branches that grow on or below the soil.
The leaves of Banksia vary between species. Sizes vary from the narrow, 1–1½ centimetre long needle-like leaves of B. ericifolia, to the large leaves of B. grandis, which may be up to 45 centimetres long. The leaves of most species have serrated edges. Leaves are arranged along the branches in irregular spirals, but in some species they are crowded together in whorls. Many species have differing adult leaves; the flowers are arranged in flower spikes or capitate flower heads. The character most associated with Banksia is the flower spike, an elongated inflorescence consisting of a woody axis covered in tightly-packed pairs of flowers attached at right angles. A single flower spike contains hundreds or thousands of flowers. Not all Banksia have an elongate flower spike, however: the members of the small Isostylis complex have long been recognised as Banksias in which the flower spike has been reduced to a head. Dryandra, they have capitate flower heads rather than spikes. Banksia flowers are a shade of yellow, but orange, red and violet flowers occur.
The colour of the flowers is determined by the colour of the perianth parts and the style. The style is much longer than the perianth, is trapped by the upper perianth parts; these are released over a period of days, either from top to bottom or from bottom to top. When the styles and perianth parts are different colours, the visual effect is of a colour change sweeping along the spike; this can be most spectacular in B. prionotes and related species, as the white inflorescence in bud becomes a brilliant orange. In most cases, the individual flowers are thin saccate in shape. Multiple flower spikes can form; this is most seen in Banksia marginata and B. ericifolia. As the flower spikes or heads age, the flower parts dry up and may turn shades of orange, tan or dark brown colour, before fading to grey over a period of years. In some species, old flower parts are lost. Old flower spikes are referred to as "cones", although they are not technically cones according to the botanical definition of the term: cones only occur in conifers and cycads.
Despite the large number of flowers per inflorescence, only a few of them develop fruit, in some species a flower spike will set no fruit at all. The fruit of Banksia is a woody follicle embedded in the axis of the inflorescence. In many species, the resulting structure is a massive woody structure called a cone; each follicle consists of two horizontal valves that enclose the seeds. The follicle opens to release the seed by splitting along the suture, in some species each valve splits too. In some species the follicles open as soon as the seed is mature, but in most species most follicles open only after stimulated to do so by bushfire; each follicle contains one or two small seeds, each with a wedge-shaped papery wing that causes it to spin as it falls to the ground. Specimens of Banksia were first collected by Sir Joseph Banks and Dr Daniel Solander, naturalists on the Endeavour during Lieutenant James Cook's first voyage to the Pacific Ocean. Cook landed on Australian soil for the first time on 29 April 1770, at a place that he named Botany Bay in recognition of "the great quantity of plants Mr Banks and Dr Solander found in this place".
Over the next seven weeks and Solander collected thousands of plant specimens, including the first specimens of a new genus that would be named Banksia in Banks' honour. Four species were present in this first collection: B. serrata, B. integrifolia, B. ericifolia and B. robur. In June the ship was careened at Endeavour River; the genus Banksia was described and named by Carolus Linnaeus the Younger in his April 1782 publication Supplementum Plantarum.
Vinca
Vinca is a genus of flowering plants in the family Apocynaceae, native to Europe, northwest Africa and southwest Asia. The English name periwinkle is shared with the related genus Catharanthus. Vinca plants are subshrubs or herbaceous, have slender trailing stems 1–2 m long but not growing more than 20–70 cm above ground; the leaves are opposite, simple broad lanceolate to ovate, 1–9 cm long and 0.5–6 cm broad. The flowers, produced through most of the growing season, are salverform, simple, 2.5–7 cm broad, with five violet petals joined together at the base to form a tube. The fruit consists of a pair of divergent follicles. Two of the species, Vinca major and Vinca minor, are extensively cultivated as a flowering evergreen ornamental plant; because the plants are low and spread they are used as groundcover in garden landscapes and container gardens. They are traditionally used in older cemeteries as an evergreen maintenance-free ground cover. Many cultivars are available, with different plant and flower colors and habits.
Although attractive, both Vinca major and Vinca minor may be invasive in some regions where they are introduced species because the rapid spreading chokes out native plant species and alters habitats. Areas affected include parts of Australia, New Zealand and the United States coastal California; the vinca alkaloids include at least 86 alkaloids extracted from plants in the genus Vinca. The chemotherapy agent vincristine is extracted from a related species, Catharanthus roseus, is used to treat some leukemias and childhood cancers, as well as several other types of cancer and some non-cancerous conditions. Vinblastine is a chemical analogue of vincristine and is used to treat various forms of cancer. Dimeric alkaloids such as vincristine and vinblastine are produced by the coupling the smaller indole alkaloids vindoline and catharanthine. In addition, the nootropic agent vincamine is derived from Vinca minor. Vinorelbine, a newer semi-synthetic chemotherapeutic agent, is used in the treatment of non-small-cell lung cancer and is prepared either from the natural products leurosine or catharanthine and vindoline, in both cases by first preparing anhydrovinblastine.
Accepted species: Vinca difformis Pourr. – Azores and central Mediterranean Vinca erecta Regel & Schmalh. – Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan Vinca herbacea Waldst. & Kit. – central and southeastern Europe.
Algae
Algae is an informal term for a large, diverse group of photosynthetic eukaryotic organisms that are not closely related, is thus polyphyletic. Including organisms ranging from unicellular microalgae genera, such as Chlorella and the diatoms, to multicellular forms, such as the giant kelp, a large brown alga which may grow up to 50 m in length. Most are aquatic and autotrophic and lack many of the distinct cell and tissue types, such as stomata and phloem, which are found in land plants; the largest and most complex marine algae are called seaweeds, while the most complex freshwater forms are the Charophyta, a division of green algae which includes, for example and the stoneworts. No definition of algae is accepted. One definition is that algae "have chlorophyll as their primary photosynthetic pigment and lack a sterile covering of cells around their reproductive cells". Although cyanobacteria are referred to as "blue-green algae", most authorities exclude all prokaryotes from the definition of algae.
Algae constitute a polyphyletic group since they do not include a common ancestor, although their plastids seem to have a single origin, from cyanobacteria, they were acquired in different ways. Green algae are examples of algae that have primary chloroplasts derived from endosymbiotic cyanobacteria. Diatoms and brown algae are examples of algae with secondary chloroplasts derived from an endosymbiotic red alga. Algae exhibit a wide range of reproductive strategies, from simple asexual cell division to complex forms of sexual reproduction. Algae lack the various structures that characterize land plants, such as the phyllids of bryophytes, rhizoids in nonvascular plants, the roots and other organs found in tracheophytes. Most are phototrophic, although some are mixotrophic, deriving energy both from photosynthesis and uptake of organic carbon either by osmotrophy, myzotrophy, or phagotrophy; some unicellular species of green algae, many golden algae, euglenids and other algae have become heterotrophs, sometimes parasitic, relying on external energy sources and have limited or no photosynthetic apparatus.
Some other heterotrophic organisms, such as the apicomplexans, are derived from cells whose ancestors possessed plastids, but are not traditionally considered as algae. Algae have photosynthetic machinery derived from cyanobacteria that produce oxygen as a by-product of photosynthesis, unlike other photosynthetic bacteria such as purple and green sulfur bacteria. Fossilized filamentous algae from the Vindhya basin have been dated back to 1.6 to 1.7 billion years ago. The singular alga retains that meaning in English; the etymology is obscure. Although some speculate that it is related to Latin algēre, "be cold", no reason is known to associate seaweed with temperature. A more source is alliga, "binding, entwining"; the Ancient Greek word for seaweed was φῦκος, which could mean either the seaweed or a red dye derived from it. The Latinization, fūcus, meant the cosmetic rouge; the etymology is uncertain, but a strong candidate has long been some word related to the Biblical פוך, "paint", a cosmetic eye-shadow used by the ancient Egyptians and other inhabitants of the eastern Mediterranean.
It could be any color: black, green, or blue. Accordingly, the modern study of marine and freshwater algae is called either phycology or algology, depending on whether the Greek or Latin root is used; the name Fucus appears in a number of taxa. The algae contain chloroplasts. Chloroplasts contain circular DNA like that in cyanobacteria and are interpreted as representing reduced endosymbiotic cyanobacteria. However, the exact origin of the chloroplasts is different among separate lineages of algae, reflecting their acquisition during different endosymbiotic events; the table below describes the composition of the three major groups of algae. Their lineage relationships are shown in the figure in the upper right. Many of these groups contain some members; some retain plastids, but not chloroplasts. Phylogeny based on plastid not nucleocytoplasmic genealogy: Linnaeus, in Species Plantarum, the starting point for modern botanical nomenclature, recognized 14 genera of algae, of which only four are considered among algae.
In Systema Naturae, Linnaeus described the genera Volvox and Corallina, a species of Acetabularia, among the animals. In 1768, Samuel Gottlieb Gmelin published the Historia Fucorum, the first work dedicated to marine algae and the first book on marine biology to use the new binomial nomenclature of Linnaeus, it included elaborate illustrations of seaweed and marine algae on folded leaves. W. H. Harvey and Lamouroux were the first to divide macroscopic algae into four divisions based on their pigmentation; this is the first use of a biochemical criterion in plant systematics. Harvey's four divisions are: red algae, brown algae, green algae, Diatomaceae. At this time, microscopic algae were discovered and reported by a different group of workers studying the Infusoria. Unlike macroalgae, which were viewed as plants, microalgae were considered animals because they are motile; the nonmotile microalgae were sometimes seen as stages of the lifecycle of plants, macroalgae, or animals. Although used as a taxonomic category in some pre-D
Cranberry
Cranberries are a group of evergreen dwarf shrubs or trailing vines in the subgenus Oxycoccus of the genus Vaccinium. In Britain, cranberry may refer to the native species Vaccinium oxycoccos, while in North America, cranberry may refer to Vaccinium macrocarpon. Vaccinium oxycoccos is cultivated in central and northern Europe, while Vaccinium macrocarpon is cultivated throughout the northern United States and Chile. In some methods of classification, Oxycoccus is regarded as a genus in its own right, they can be found in acidic bogs throughout the cooler regions of the Northern Hemisphere. Cranberries are low, creeping vines up to 2 meters long and 5 to 20 centimeters in height; the flowers are dark pink, with distinct reflexed petals, leaving the style and stamens exposed and pointing forward. They are pollinated by bees; the fruit is a berry, larger than the leaves of the plant. It is edible, but with an acidic taste that overwhelms its sweetness. In 2016, 98% of world production of cranberries resulted from the United States and Chile.
Most cranberries are processed into products such as juice, sauce and sweetened dried cranberries, with the remainder sold fresh to consumers. Cranberry sauce is a traditional accompaniment to turkey at Christmas dinner in the United Kingdom, at Christmas and Thanksgiving dinners in the United States and Canada. There are three to four species of cranberry, classified into two sections: Subgenus Oxycoccus, sect. OxycoccusVaccinium oxycoccos or Oxycoccus palustris is widespread throughout the cool temperate Northern Hemisphere, including northern Europe, northern Asia, northern North America, it has small 5–10 mm leaves. The flowers are dark pink, with a purple central spike, produced on finely hairy stems; the fruit is a small pale pink berry, with a refreshing sharp acidic flavor. Vaccinium microcarpum or Oxycoccus microcarpus occurs in northern North America, northern Europe and northern Asia, differs from V. oxycoccos in the leaves being more triangular, the flower stems hairless. Some botanists include it within V. oxycoccos.
Vaccinium macrocarpon or Oxycoccus macrocarpus native to northern North America across Canada, eastern United States, south to North Carolina at high altitudes). It differs from V. oxycoccos in the leaves being larger, 10–20 mm long, in its apple-like taste. Subgenus Oxycoccus, sect. OxycoccoidesVaccinium erythrocarpum or Oxycoccus erythrocarpus native to southeastern North America at high altitudes in the southern Appalachian Mountains, in eastern Asia. Cranberries are related to bilberries and huckleberries, all in Vaccinium subgenus Vaccinium; these differ in having bell-shaped flowers, the petals not being reflexed, woodier stems, forming taller shrubs. Some plants of the unrelated genus Viburnum are sometimes called "highbush cranberries". Cranberries are susceptible to false blossom, a harmful but controllable phytoplasma disease common in the eastern production areas of Massachusetts and New Jersey; the name, derives from the German, first named as cranberry in English by the missionary John Eliot in 1647.
Around 1694, German and Dutch colonists in New England used the word, cranberry, to represent the expanding flower, stem and petals resembling the neck and bill of a crane. The traditional English name for the plant more common in Europe, Vaccinium oxycoccos, originated from plants with small red berries found growing in fen lands of England. In North America, the Narragansett people of the Algonquian nation in the regions of New England appeared to be using cranberries in pemmican for food and for dye. Calling the red berries, the Narragansett people may have introduced cranberries to colonists in Massachusetts. In 1550, James White Norwood made reference to Native Americans using cranberries. In James Rosier's book The Land of Virginia there is an account of Europeans coming ashore and being met with Native Americans bearing bark cups full of cranberries. In Plymouth, there is a 1633 account of the husband of Mary Ring auctioning her cranberry-dyed petticoat for 16 shillings. In 1643, Roger Williams's book A Key Into the Language of America described cranberries, referring to them as "bearberries" because bears ate them.
In 1648, preacher John Elliott was quoted in Thomas Shepard's book Clear Sunshine of the Gospel with an account of the difficulties the Pilgrims were having in using the Indians to harvest cranberries as they preferred to hunt and fish. In 1663, the Pilgrim cookbook appears with a recipe for cranberry sauce. In 1667, New Englanders sent to King Charles ten barrels of cranberries, three barrels of codfish and some Indian corn as a means of appeasement for his anger over their local coining of the Pine Tree shilling. In 1669, Captain Richard Cobb had a banquet in his house, serving wild turkey with sauce made from wild cranberries. In the 1672 book New England Rarities Discovered author John Josselyn described cranberries, writing: Sauce for the Pilgrims, cranberry or bearberry, is a small trayling plant that grows in salt marshes that are overgrown with moss; the berries are of a pale yellow color, afterwards red, as big as a cherry, some round, others oval, all of them hollow with sower as
Raunkiær plant life-form
The Raunkiær system is a system for categorizing plants using life-form categories, devised by Danish botanist Christen C. Raunkiær and extended by various authors, it was first proposed in a talk to the Danish Botanical Society in 1904 as can be inferred from the printed discussion of that talk, but not the talk itself, nor its title. The journal, Botanisk Tidsskrift, published brief comments on the talk by M. P. Porsild, with replies by Raunkiær. A fuller account appeared in French the following year. Raunkiær elaborated further on the system and published this in Danish in 1907; the original note and the 1907 paper were much translated to English and published with Raunkiær's collected works. Raunkiær's life-form scheme has subsequently been revised and modified by various authors, but the main structure has survived. Raunkiær's life-form system may be useful in researching the transformations of biotas and the genesis of some groups of phytophagous animals; the subdivisions of the Raunkiær system are premised on the location of the bud of a plant during seasons with adverse conditions, i. e. cold seasons and dry seasons: These plants woody perennials, grow stems into the air, with their resting buds being a maximum of 25 cm above the soil surface, e. g. trees and shrubs, epiphytes, which Raunkiær separated as a distinct class.
Raunkiær further divided the phanerophytes according to height as Megaphanerophytes, Mesophanerophytes, Microphanerophytes, Nanophanerophytes. Further division was premised on the characters of duration of foliage, i. e. evergreen or deciduous, presence of covering bracts on buds, for 8 classes. 3 further divisions were made to increase the total of classes to 12: Phanerophytic stem succulents, Phanerophytic epiphytes, Phanerophytic herbs. These plants have buds on persistent shoots near the soil surface; these plants have buds at or near the soil surface, e. g. common daisy and dandelion, are divided into: Protohemicryptophytes: only cauline foliage. These plants have subterranean or under water resting buds, are divided into: Geophytes: rest in dry soil as a rhizome, corm, et cetera, e. g. crocus and tulip, are subdivided into: Rhizome geophytes, Stem-tuber geophytes, Root-tuber geophytes, Bulb geophytes, Root geophytes. Helophytes: rest in marshy or wet soil, e. g. reedmace and marsh-marigold.
These are annual plants that complete their lives in favorable conditions and survive the unfavorable cold or dry season in the form of seeds. Many plants of deserts are by necessity therophytes. Epiphytes were included in the phanerophytes but separated because of the irrelevance to them of location in or out of soil. Aerophytes were a addition to the system; these are plants that obtain moisture and nutrients from the rain. They grow on other plants yet are not parasitic on them; these are perennial plants. Some can live on mobile sand dunes. Like epiphytes and hemicryptophytes, their buds are near the soil surface; some Tillandsia species are classified as aerophytes
Plant
Plants are multicellular, predominantly photosynthetic eukaryotes of the kingdom Plantae. Plants were treated as one of two kingdoms including all living things that were not animals, all algae and fungi were treated as plants. However, all current definitions of Plantae exclude the fungi and some algae, as well as the prokaryotes. By one definition, plants form the clade Viridiplantae, a group that includes the flowering plants and other gymnosperms and their allies, liverworts and the green algae, but excludes the red and brown algae. Green plants obtain most of their energy from sunlight via photosynthesis by primary chloroplasts that are derived from endosymbiosis with cyanobacteria, their chloroplasts contain b, which gives them their green color. Some plants are parasitic or mycotrophic 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 common.
There are about 320 thousand species of plants, of which the great majority, some 260–290 thousand, are seed plants. Green plants provide a substantial proportion of the world's molecular oxygen and are the basis of most of Earth's ecosystems on land. Plants that produce grain and vegetables form humankind's basic foods, have been domesticated for millennia. Plants have many cultural and other uses, as ornaments, building materials, writing material and, in great variety, they have been the source of medicines and psychoactive drugs; the scientific study of plants is known as a branch of biology. All living things were traditionally placed into one of two groups and animals; this classification may date from Aristotle, who made the distincton between plants, which do not move, animals, which are mobile to catch their food. Much when Linnaeus created the basis of the modern system of scientific classification, these two groups became the kingdoms Vegetabilia and Animalia. Since it has become clear that the plant kingdom as defined included several unrelated groups, the fungi and several groups of algae were removed to new kingdoms.
However, these organisms are still considered plants in popular contexts. The term "plant" implies the possession of the following traits multicellularity, possession of cell walls containing cellulose and the ability to carry out photosynthesis with primary chloroplasts; when the name Plantae or plant is applied to a specific group of organisms or taxon, it refers to one of four concepts. From least to most inclusive, these four groupings are: Another way of looking at the relationships between the different groups that have been called "plants" is through a cladogram, which shows their evolutionary relationships; these are not yet settled, but one accepted relationship between the three groups described above is shown below. Those which have been called "plants" are in bold; the way in which the groups of green algae are combined and named varies between authors. Algae comprise several different groups of organisms which produce food by photosynthesis and thus have traditionally been included in the plant kingdom.
The seaweeds range from large multicellular algae to single-celled organisms and are classified into three groups, the green algae, red algae and brown algae. There is good evidence that the brown algae evolved independently from the others, from non-photosynthetic ancestors that formed endosymbiotic relationships with red algae rather than from cyanobacteria, they are no longer classified as plants as defined here; the Viridiplantae, the green plants – green algae and land plants – form a clade, a group consisting of all the descendants of a common ancestor. With a few exceptions, the green plants have the following features in common, they undergo closed mitosis without centrioles, have mitochondria with flat cristae. The chloroplasts of green plants are surrounded by two membranes, suggesting they originated directly from endosymbiotic cyanobacteria. Two additional groups, the Rhodophyta and Glaucophyta have primary chloroplasts that appear to be derived directly from endosymbiotic cyanobacteria, although they differ from Viridiplantae in the pigments which are used in photosynthesis and so are different in colour.
These groups differ from green plants in that the storage polysaccharide is floridean starch and is stored in the cytoplasm rather than in the plastids. They appear to have had a common origin with Viridiplantae and the three groups form the clade Archaeplastida, whose name implies that their chloroplasts were derived from a single ancient endosymbiotic event; this is the broadest modern definition of the term'plant'. In contrast, most other algae not only have different pigments but have chloroplasts with three or four surrounding membranes, they are not close relatives of the Archaeplastida having acquired chloroplasts separately from ingested or symbiotic green and red algae. They are thus not included in the broadest modern definition of the plant kingdom, although they were in the past; the green plants or Viridiplantae were traditionally divided into the green algae (including
