NIES-MCC | KU-MACC | Tree to Strain Japanese | English
Life / Eukarya / Plantae (Archaeplastida)

Glaucophyta (Cyanophora, Glaucocystis etc.)
Rhodophyta (Cyanidioschyzon, Porphyra, Gracilaria, Gelidium etc.)
Viridiplantae (Chlamydomonas, Chlorella, Ulva, Closterium, land plants etc.)

* Dotted lines indicate they may be polyphyletic

The Plantae (in the sense of this HP) includes organisms possessing plastids via primary endosymbiosis with a cyanobacterium (thus enclosed by double membranes). This group is sometimes reffered as Archaeplastida or primary plants. The organizations are varied, unicellular, colonial, microscopic or macroscopic multicellular. The habitats are also varied from marine, freshwater to land. The land plants (Viridiplantae) thrive and perform the main producers on land. Most species are photosynthetic autotrophs, but some are colorless heterotrophs. Land plants are indispensable to human, and other plants such as Chlorella, Enteromorpha (Chlorophyta), Porphyra and Gelidium (Rhodophyta) are usefull for us. Some land plants (e.g. Arabidopsis) and algal plants (e.g. Chlamydomonas) are studied as model organisms.

In the Glaucophyta and Rhodophyta phycobiliproteins (phycocyanin or phycoerythrin) on thylakoids as phycobilisomes are main accessory photosynthetic pigments as cyanobacteria, but the Viridiplantae possesses chlorophyll b and no phycobiliproteins. Strage polysaccharides of the Plantae are exclusively α-1,4-glucan in cytoplasmic matrix (Glaucophyta and Rhodophyta) or plastids (Viridiplantae). Mitochondrial cristae are flat.

Tha Plantae in this sense is usually considered monophyletic (e.g. Rodríguez-Ezpeleta et al. 2005. Curr. Biol. 15: 1325-1330), but the contradictory opinion is present (e.g. Nozaki et al. 2007 Mol. Biol. Evol. 24: 1592-1595).


1: Cyanophora [NIES-763] (Glaucophyta). 2: Antithamnion (Rhodophyta, KU-1001). 3: Closterium [NIES-124] (Viridiplantae).
Eukarya