CREATION BY EVOLUTION
Algae.
- Nearly all grow in water, with spores unprotected.
From water to land
Liverworts and Mosses.
- Have spores in a protecting spore case and grow on moist land. Have no true roots but have root-like organs (rhizoids).
From rhizoids to roots
Club Mosses.
- Have roots and water-conducting tissue and grow on drier land. Leaves small. Reproduce by spores. One spore case. Each spore develops into a small sexual plant (prothallus).
From small leaves to large leaves
Ferns.
- Spores usually all of one size and germinate on moist ground. No seeds.
From spores to seeds
Cycads.
- Two sizes of spores, which grow to small sexual plants that develop on the parent plants, thus producing seeds. Cycads have swimming sperms, as do all the preceding forms.
Conifers (cone-bearing plants).
- These and the flowering plants do not have swimming sperms. Cycads and conifers have naked seeds—that is, they are gymnosperms.
From cones to flowers
Anthophyta (flowering plants).
- Seeds enclosed in a covering—the fruit. Some seeds have two seed leaves {cotyledons), some only one, thus forming the following groups:
- Dicotyledons.
- Two seed leaves; leaves netted veined; parts of the flower in fives or fours.
- Monocotyledons.
- One seed leaf; leaves usually parallel veined; parts of the flowers in threes.
The above summary takes account of all the great groups shown in the exhibit except the fungi, which form one of the lower branches, just a little above the algae. The fungi resemble the algae in essential characters, except that none of them has the green coloring matter of plants, known as leaf-
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