The origin of a land flora fundamentally shifted the course of evolution of life on earth,
facilitating terrestrialization of other eukaryotic lineages and altering the planet's geology …

Contents Summary 1012 I. Introduction 1013 II. The mycorrhizal symbiosis at the dawn and
rise of the land flora 1014 III. From early land plants to early trees: the origin of roots and true …

Fungi are an essential component of any ecosystem and have diverse ecological roles,
ranging from endophytes to epiphytes and pathogens to saprobes. The current estimate of …

The acquisition of stomata is one of the key innovations that led to the colonisation of the
terrestrial environment by the earliest land plants. However, our understanding of the origin …

A survey of 659 papers mostly published since 1987 was conducted to compile a checklist of
mycorrhizal occurrence among 3,617 species (263 families) of land plants. A plant …

Geological sites of exceptional fossil preservation are becoming a focus of research on root
evolution because they retain edaphic and ecological context, and the remains of plant soft …

Background Land plants (embryophytes) evolved from streptophyte green algae, a small
group of freshwater algae ranging from scaly, unicellular flagellates (Mesostigma) to …

Identifying the genetic mechanisms that underpin the evolution of new organ and tissue
systems is an aim of evolutionary developmental biology. Comparative functional genetic …

Fungi (E umycota) form close associations with plants, with which they have co‐existed
since the dawn of life on land, but their diversity in early terrestrial ecosystems is still poorly …

The “bryophytes” comprise three phyla of plants united by a similar haploid‐dominant life
cycle and unbranched sporophytes bearing one sporangium: the liverworts …