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New Plant Kingdoms Picked
New Look at Evolution Alters Theories

The Associated Press
S T. L O U I S, Aug. 5 — The plant and animal kingdoms actually represent five distinct groups, according to scientists who announced discoveries that fundamentally alter long-standing theories about the evolution of plants.
     Researchers presented data showing that green plants, red plants and brown plants (mostly algae and seaweeds), evolved from three different one-celled plants, and so deserve to be considered individual kingdoms.
     The researchers are among 200 scientists from 12 countries involved in the “Deep Green” project, a five-year effort to reconstruct the evolutionary tree of life for green plants.
     They found that the many families of green plants living on land today descended from a single, green freshwater “Eve,” a relative of which still lives in pristine lakes as it did more than a billion years ago.

All About ‘Eve’
New data indicate that the “Eve” was something similar to today’s coleochaetes, tiny green plants about the size of a pinhead and just one cell thick, which require fresh water that is completely free of pollutants.
     “This overturns traditional thinking among scientists and what is taught in every textbook in America,” said Brent Mishler, a biologist at the University of California at Berkeley and one of the team leaders.
     Current texts say land plants evolved from saltwater plants.
     Scientists involved in the study presented their work Wednesday in St. Louis at the 16th International Botanical Congress.

More Complete Tree of Life
The group has produced the most complete tree of life of any group of living things on the planet.
     Their findings are important because evolutionary relationships among plants are crucial in knowing how plants work. Understanding this allows researchers to examine chemicals in plants for their medicinal value.
     Among Deep Green’s other key findings:
     The members of what has traditionally been called the plant kingdom should actually be divided into four separate kingdoms.
     One of those kingdoms, fungi, is more closely related to animals than to plants. That means a mushroom is more closely related to a human being than the tree it grows on.
     “We can’t really think of life on Earth in terms of only the ‘animal kingdom’ and the ‘plant kingdom’ anymore,” Mishler said. “In fact, there are five kingdoms of complex organisms on Earth today.”

S U M M A R Y

By finding that plants, red plants and brown plants evolved from three different one-celled plants, scientists are opening up new questions in how the plant world works.

A new classifications mean some new ideas: a mushroom is now more closely related to a human being than the tree it grows on.