Amborella trichopoda is a rare shrub found only in New Caledonia. It is of botanical interest because genetic studies place it at or near the base of the flowering plants. That is, it represents a line of flowering plants that very early on diverged from all the other extant species of flowering plants, and so gives us some ideas about what the ancestral flowering plants were like. In newer classification schemes, Amborella is given its own family and order. The older Cronquist system treated it as a family within the Order Laurales. Scientific classification or biological classification is how biologists group and categorize extinct and living species of organisms. ... Divisions Land plants (embryophytes) Non-vascular plants (bryophytes) Marchantiophyta - liverworts Anthocerotophyta - hornworts Bryophyta - mosses Vascular plants (tracheophytes) Lycopodiophyta - clubmosses Equisetophyta - horsetails Pteridophyta - true ferns Psilotophyta - whisk ferns Ophioglossophyta - adderstongues Seed plants (spermatophytes) †Pteridospermatophyta - seed ferns Pinophyta - conifers Cycadophyta - cycads Ginkgophyta - ginkgo Gnetophyta - gnetae Magnoliophyta - flowering plants Adiantum pedatum (a... Classes Magnoliopsida - Dicots Liliopsida - Monocots The flowering plants (also called angiosperms) are a major group of land plants. ... Orders see text Dicotyledons or dicots are flowering plants whose seed typically contains two embryonic leaves or cotyledons. ... In biology, binomial nomenclature refers to the formal method of naming species. ... Henri Ernest Baillon was a French botanist and physician. ... A willow shrub A shrub or bush is a horticultural rather than strictly botanical category of woody plant, distinguished from a tree by its multiple stems and lower height, usually less than 6 m tall. ... Botany is the scientific study of plant life. ... Classes Magnoliopsida - Dicots Liliopsida - Monocots The flowering plants (also called angiosperms) are a major group of land plants. ... The Cronquist system is a scheme for the classification of flowering plants (or angiosperms). ... Families Atherospermataceae Calycanthaceae Gomortegaceae Hernandiaceae Lauraceae Monimiaceae Siparunaceae The Laurales are an order of flowering plants. ...

The leaves are alternately arranged, evergreen, simple, with a serrated margin, and about 8-10 cm long. Amborella produces small flowers 4-8 mm across in loose clusters, each flower with several spirally-arranged tepals. Amborella is dioecious: each flower produces both stamens and carpels, but only one sex develops fully and fertile in the flowers of an individual plant, the structures of the other sex remaining undeveloped. The fruit is a red berry containing a single seed, 5-8 mm long. In botany, a leaf is an above-ground plant organ specialized for photosynthesis. ... A Silver Fir shoot showing three successive years of retained leaves In botany, an evergreen plant is a plant which retains its leaves year-round, with each leaf persisting for more than 12 months. ... Wildflowers Flower (Latin flos, floris; French fleur), a term popularly used for the bloom or blossom of a plant, is the reproductive structure of those plants classified as angiosperms (flowering plants; Division Magnoliophyta). ... A magnolia flower showing the petal-like white tepals In a general sense, a tepal is any member or segment of the perianth of a flower, such as a petal or sepal, usually used when all are of similar shape and color (that is, undifferentiated). ... Plant sexuality deals with the wide variety of sexual reproduction systems found across the plant kingdom. ... Stamens of the Amaryllis with prominent anthers carrying pollen. ... Amaryllis style and stigmas A carpel is the female reproductive organ of a flower; the basic unit of the gynoecium. ... Fruit stall in Barcelona, Catalonia. ... A seed is the ripened ovule of gymnosperm or angiosperm plants. ...

Individuals of this species in the wild are being reduced by overgrazing and habitat destruction. Habitat destruction is a process of land use change in which one habitat-type is removed and replaced with some other habitat-type. ...

External links

• National Tropical Botanical Garden (Hawaii, USA): article with detailed photos of plants in cultivation
• Amborellaceae in L. Watson and M.J. Dallwitz (1992 onwards). The families of flowering plants: descriptions, illustrations, identification, information retrieval. http://delta-intkey.com