Question

5. Explain nutrient and water transport in nonvascular plants and how this affects attainable plant height.

6. Discuss in which environments and on which substrates nonvascular plants such as mosses can grow. Although nonvascular plants are much more basic with regards to their evolved structural complexity (an old term for this is “primitive”), do they have an edge in certain conditions?

Answer 1

5) algae, bryophytes, are non-vascular plants, these plants absorb nutrients and water from the environment, algae live in the water so water and nutrients are directly absorbed into the cells of these plants, but bryophytes are land plants but these land plants can live only in moist areas, these plants absorb water and nutrients directly into the respective plant parts, in liverworts the leaf-like structures absorb water directly, since these plants do not have vascular system these plants cannot grow tall, because water and nutrients moves between the cells via osmosis and diffusion, these process cover long distances, so water and nutrients cannot reach the tip of a plant just by these passive processes, so non-vascular plants are shorter than vascular plants