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Bryophyte
Terrestrial plants that lack vascular tissue / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Bryophytes (/ˈbraɪ.əˌfaɪts/)[1] are a group of land plants, sometimes treated as a taxonomic division, that contains three groups of non-vascular land plants (embryophytes): the liverworts, hornworts, and mosses.[2] In the strict sense, the division Bryophyta consists of the mosses only. Bryophytes are characteristically limited in size and prefer moist habitats although some species can survive in drier environments.[3] The bryophytes consist of about 20,000 plant species.[4][5] Bryophytes produce enclosed reproductive structures (gametangia and sporangia), but they do not produce flowers or seeds. They reproduce sexually by spores and asexually by fragmentation or the production of gemmae.[6] Though bryophytes were considered a paraphyletic group in recent years, almost all of the most recent phylogenetic evidence supports the monophyly of this group, as originally classified by Wilhelm Schimper in 1879.[7] The term bryophyte comes from Ancient Greek βρύον (brúon) 'tree moss, liverwort', and φυτόν (phutón) 'plant'.
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