Viridiplantae facts for kids
Quick facts for kids Viridiplantae |
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Viridiplantae
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Viridiplantae ('green plants') are the clade which includes the green algae and land plants.
In some classification systems they have been called Plantae, by expanding the traditional plant kingdom (Embryophytes) to include the green algae.
Adl and colleagues, who produced a classification for eukaryotes in 2005, used the name Chloroplastida for this group, reflecting the group having primary chloroplasts with green chlorophyll. They rejected the name Viridiplantae on the grounds that most of the species are not plants, as understood traditionally.
There are more than 350,000 species of Viridiplantae.
Group structure
The monophyletic Chlorophyta and Charophyta are classified under Viridiplantae. A common classification is:
- Viridiplantae
- Chlorophyta
- Streptophyta
'Green algae' is not used here because they are definitely not monophyletic. It is just a convenience term for Chlorophyta and Charophyta together.
There are different opinions about the classification. Another opinion is that only the Charophyceae are closely related to land plants, and that arrangement is simplified as:
- Viridiplantae
- Chlorophyta
- Charophyta
- Streptophyta
