Green Plant Phylogeny Research Coordination Group
A five-year effort to reconstruct the evolutionary relationships among all green plants has resulted in the most complete "tree of life" of any group of living things on the planet, including animals.The up-to-date family tree has revealed several surprises about the evolution of green plants, such as how they emerged from the sea onto land and how they are related to the four other major kingdoms: the brown plants, the red plants, the fungi and the animals.
Specifically, the team has overturned the traditional belief that the so-called "land-plant invasion" was led by seawater plants. Instead, the research team has found that primitive freshwater plants provided the ancestral stock from which all green plants now on land are descended, and that this ancestor spawned every green plant now alive on earth.
This knowledge will help scientists in a broad range of disciplines, from those trying to develop new and better crops to those prospecting for new medicines. (exerpt from University of California press release)