Plant

Plants are a major group of living things (about 300,000 species), including familiar organisms such as trees, flowers, herbs, and ferns. Aristotle divided all living things between plants, which generally do not move or have sensory organs, and animals. In Linnaeus' system, these became the Kingdoms Vegetabilia (later Plantae) and Animalia. Since then, it has become clear that the Plantae as originally defined included several unrelated groups, and the fungi and several groups of algae were removed to new kingdoms. However, these are still often considered plants in many contexts. Indeed, any attempt to match "plant" with a single taxon is doomed to fail, because plant is a vaguely defined concept unrelated to the presumed phylogenic concepts on which modern taxonomy is based.

Growth

Simple plants like algae may have short life spans as individuals, but their populations are commonly seasonal. Other plants may be organized according to their seasonal growth pattern:

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• Annual: live and reproduce within one growing season.
• Biennial: live for two growing seasons; usually reproduce in second year.
• Perennial: live for many growing seasons; continue to reproduce once mature.

Among the vascular plants, perennials include both evergreens that keep their leaves the entire year, and deciduous plants which lose their leaves for some part. In temperate and boreal climates, they generally lose their leaves during the winter; many tropical plants lose their leaves during the dry season.

Related Topics:
Evergreen - Deciduous - Temperate - Boreal - Tropical

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The growth rate of plants is extremely variable. Some mosses grow less than 1 μm/h, while most trees grow 25-250 μm/h. Some climbing species, such as kudzu, which do not need to produce thick supportive tissue, may grow up to 12500 μm/h.

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