Bryophyte is a botanical term which refers to any member of the following divisions of the Plantae kingdom:
Bryophyta (mosses) Anthocerophyta (hornworts) Hepatophyta (liverworts) Classes Musci Marchantiopsida (formerly Hepaticae) Anthocerotae The division Bryophyta comprises the nonvascular complex plants: complex plants without vascular tissue to circulate liquids around their tissues. ... Orders Anthocerales Spaerocarpales Marchantiales Metzgeriales Calobryales Jungermaniales Liverworts are non-vascular plants in the Class Marchantiopsida, formerly known as the Hepaticae. ...
Despite the similarity in name, a bryophyte does not exclusively imply a species of the division bryophyta. The confusion arises because hornworts and liverworts were formerly regarded as members of the bryophyta division.
The bryophytes are generally considered a "key" group in our understanding of how the modern land plants (the embryophytes) are related to each other phylogenetically and how they came to conquer the hostile land environment from their primitive home in fresh water (habitats still occupied by relatives of the land plants, the green algae).
This is because of the apparent basal phylogenetic position of the bryophytes among the extant embryophytes, the remnant lineages present today from the spectacular radiation of the land plants in the Devonian Period, some 400 million years ago.
Bryophytes tend to have distributional ranges that correspond to historical biogeographic patterns of tracheophytes (Crum, 1966; Schofield, 1969; Crum, 1972; Schofield, 1983), but intriguingly, species of bryophytes (at least with currently prevailing species concepts in the group) usually are relatively more widely distributed.
The bryophytes are those embryophyte plants ('land plants') that are non-vascular: they have tissues and enclosed reproductive systems, but they lack vascular tissue that circulates liquids.
However, since the three groups of bryophytes form a paraphyletic group, they now are placed in three separate divisions.
Monoicous bryophytes produce both antheridia and archegonia on the same plant body.
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