Name
Class
Date
What Is a Plant?
Characteristics of Plants
What Plants Need Members of the kingdom Plantae are eukaryotes that have cell walls
containing cellulose and that carry out photosynthesis. Plants need sunlight, gas exchange, and
water and minerals to survive.
Use the terms below to label what plants need and gases they exchange.
carbon dioxide
minerals
oxygen
sunlight
water
Answer the questions.
1. The basic needs of plants can be grouped into three categories. What are the three categories?
2. Why do plants need sunlight?
3. Plants need all of the following for photosynthesis, except
A. sunlight.
C. carbon dioxide.
B. flowers.
D. water.
4. Plants exchange gases with the surrounding air through their
5. Is the following statement true or false? Plants are multicellular prokaryotes.
Name
Class
Date
The History and Evolution of Plants
The cladogram shows plant evolution. The circles represent important adaptations in plant
evolution.
Follow the directions.
1. Circle the plants that have true water-conducting tissue.
2. Draw an X on the plants that have seeds.
Green algae
Mosses
and
relatives
Ferns and
relatives
Conebearing
plants
Seeds
Embryo
formation
Flowering
plants
Flowers; seeds
enclosed in
fruit
True waterconducting
tissue
Plant ancestor
Answer the questions.
3. Which plants have seeds?
4. Which plants have flowers and fruits?
5. Which evolved earlier, seeds or vascular tissue?
6. Answer the following question in one or two sentences. How did the relative lack of water on
land affect how plants evolved?
Name
Class
Date
The Plant Life Cycle
All plants have life cycles with alternating phases. This means that they have a haploid phase and
a diploid phase. The diploid phase is called the sporophyte. The haploid phase is called the
gametophyte.
Follow the directions.
1. Use red to color the arrows that show haploid stages.
2. Use blue to color the arrows that show diploid stages.
3. Label the sporophyte plant stages of the life cycle.
4. Label the gametophyte plant stages of the life cycle.
Spore
Sperm
Eggs
Answer the questions.
5. Which of the following produces spores?
sporophyte plant
gametophyte plant
6. Which best describes eggs and sperm?
haploid
diploid
7. In the sentence, “An important trend in plant evolution is the increasing size of sporophytes
and the decreasing size of gametophyte,” what does the word trend mean?
A. system
C. test
B. sequence
D. tendency