Lower plants
What are 'lower plants'? No, the name
has nothing to do with their stature, although it's true that many
of them are small and low-growing. Rather, the term covers a
very diverse range of plants and plant-like organisms that are seen
as being 'lower' down the evolutionary scale in comparison with
flowering plants, ferns and conifers.
So what kind of plants do you find in this grouping?
Usually included are:
- bryophytes - mosses and their relatives
- fungi
- myxomycetes - or as they are more graphically
known, 'slime moulds'
- lichens
- stoneworts - a distinctive group of
freshwater algae
Amongst these, only the bryophytes and the stoneworts are true
plants. Fungi and slime moulds are actually more closely
related to animals. Lichens are made up of two components: a
fungus and either an alga or a 'cyanobacterium' (a bacterium with a
blue-green pigment).