Figure 1

A simplified version of the plant phylogenetic tree simplified and condensed from Pryer et al. [11]. The tree shows that lycophytes (highlighted) diverged from other vascular plant lineages soon after plants colonized the terrestrial environment. Representative species were chosen from sub-clades within the clades listed, and illustrate major developments in plant evolution including the colonization of land (land plants, L), the development of vasculature (vascular plants, V) and true leaves (euphyllophytes, E), and the evolution of flowers (flowering plants, F), and seeds (seed plants, S).