Information on Nonflowering & Flowering Plants

Evolution

• The first land plants were all nonflowering plants, a grouping that includes familiar extant species such as mosses, ferns and conifers. For 120 million years, these plants dominated the planet until the first flowering plants -- similar to the magnolia trees seen today -- arrived on the scene. Development of flowers in the plant kingdom coincided with the rise of the class of mammals in the animal kingdom, and both classes became dominant around the same time, about 65 million years ago.
  
  

Characteristics

• The obvious difference between nonflowering and flowering plants -- the absence or presence of flowers -- is not the only or a frivolous distinction. Flowering plants differ from other plants because they conceal their seeds inside of maternal plant tissue rather than leaving them exposed on the outside of the plant, as earlier seed plants did. In addition, flowering plants have improved vascular transport systems compared with their nonflowering relatives, and a process called double fertilization produces food inside of the seed for the plant embryo.
  
  

Reproduction

• Flowering plants also developed new methods of seed dispersal, such as encasing seeds inside of fruit.Medioimages/Photodisc/Digital Vision/Getty Images
  
  The key difference between nonflowering and flowering plants concerns reproduction. The earliest plants -- the mosses and the ferns -- reproduced using spores, not seeds. Adult plants shed millions of spores in hopes that one would mature into a plant form called a gametophyte, capable of sexual reproduction and producing a new adult plant. These early plants required access to water to carry out sexual reproduction. While early seed plants, such as conifers and ginkgos, had higher reproductive success rates than their spore-producing predecessors, nonflowering seed plants relied on the wind to carry their pollen from plant to plant. Flowering plants, on the other hand, evolved shapes, colors and scents attractive to pollinators, such as bees, ants and hummingbirds. Reproduction became increasingly a deliberate act and less a matter of chance.
  
  

Adaptation and Success

• Looking around your yard and garden, one of the key differences you can observe between the nonflowering and flowering plants are the number of species of each. With the exception of conifers and the occasional fern, most common garden plants belong to the flowering plant division. The structural and reproductive adaptations developed by flowering plants have given them a significant evolutionary edge over nonflowering plants. Today, more than 85 percent of the plant species on Earth belong to the flowering plant division, a testament to the success of its adaptations.