Part One: Choose One of Your Water Plants to Work With

Design Step 1: Choose a water plant

I have chosen the scrubber, a low-growing plant that clings to rocks in the ocean.

The scrubber grows in shallow water and is sometimes left in the air at low tide.

Design Step 2: Show what the plant looks like on land.

The scrubbers' mass of cells has grown to be more sponge-like so that it can hold onto rain water. I call these plants mats.

These plants have no roots or vascular structures. When there is no rain they dry out and die, but some of the cells become dormant as tough walled unicellular cysts. These begin to grow again when they get wet, and the dry remains of the dead cells hold the water around them.

The tiny dry cysts can also be picked up and blown by the wind during storms. Some of them later develop into new plants.

Mats are able to survive on land in areas of heavy rainfall (future Rain Forest biome).

Design Step 3: Show additional adaptations.

See what can happen in a few million years! Some of the mats have become shaggy mats. Parts of them extend out past the rocks and contact the soil, but they don't really have any roots yet. However, the cells on the bottom do poke down into the ground a fraction of an inch, and water moves through the clump by capillary action. When cells form long strings lying side by side the water transport is more efficient.

Shaggy mats continue to live in areas of high humidity and heavy rainfall.

Part Two : Diversify into More Biomes

Biome One: See low-growing plants above.

Biome Two: Adapt Plant to a Grasslands Biome

Adaptation Step One: Think about the Biome

I have chosen a Grassland Biome.

A Grassland Type of Biome has intermittent rain and often has long, freezing winters.  The new plants will need to store water more efficiently, protect the reproductive cysts from cold, and anchor themselves more firmly to resist the wind.

A thicker plant mass can do these things: I will make the plants mound up. They will need better ways to hold onto the ground, too.

Adaptation Step Two: Create and describe the plants

Here is how I created the new plants, the hay stacks.

These shaggy mats have adapted to this biome by becoming heaps of vegetation. I call them haystacks.

These plants hang onto the ground by projecting cells that go into the soil. These projections are not really true roots, although they do pick up a little moisture. Perhaps they will evolve into roots.

These plants are dense mats of vegetation. The inside of the mounds appears to be dead, but it absorbs and holds water. There is some water transport between the cells.

The dense matted structure also protects the cysts from dehydration by the cold winter winds. The plants die in the cold, but they have "learned" to form cysts in response to cold as well as dry weather.

Haystacks reproduce by starting up from any living broken piece (vegetative reproduction) and by having their cysts blown to new places by the wind.

Additional Adaptations for the Haystack Family
      (Optional but easy!)

Millions of years have passed. The climate is becoming wetter. Trees are encroaching on the grassland. There is some shade on the ground where the haystacks are.

Some of the haystacks have true roots now. This allows them to grow into taller mounds. I call them high hays .

These high hays are a mass of tough and fibrous tangled stem-like strands. These strands are interwoven, holding the plant together.

The cells on the insides of these high hays sometimes grow in parallel groups. This provides places where water can be transported by capillary action. These groups of cells may be the beginnings of a vascular system. With increasing rainfall, the outer cells can stay alive even on such a tall plant.

Adaptation Step One: Consider the Tropical Forest Biome.

This biome is wet, warm, and humid, but the competition for light is fierce. The shaggy mats must find some way to get a share of the light.

If they form thin mats with adhesive cells under the green cells they will be able to climb trees, especially if they form cysts everywhere along their growth.

 

 Adaptation Step Two: Take a Primitive Clump of Shaggy Mats

Change size, flatten, stretch.

This is a soft, loose mass of cells that climbs over anything in its path.   It can even climb up trees and hang down from their branches.

Here are some cells from the bottom of this Shawl Plant. You can see that the base of each one has a little brown part that can grip the surface that it is on.

Part Three : Some Ways to Report Your Results

1. Use a Table

Notice that I have given the plant's parentage with the name: grandparent/parent/plant

The Development of Land Plants
Plant	Name	height	Environment	Special Adaptations
	Scrubbers clumps/scrubbers	1/4 inches to about 2 inches	clings to stones in shallow and tidal water and to rocks in heavy rain areas	cells cling to rocks with small primitive structures reproduction by cysts
	Mats clumps/scrubbers /mats	1 to 2 inches	clings to rocks in rain forest type environments	Thicker mats soak up water reproduction by cysts and broken pieces
	Shaggy Mats clumps/scrubbers /mats/ shaggy mats	2 to 4 inches	heavy rainfall and humidity will become rain forest one day	Some contact with soil, water moves by capillary action in the clumps reproduction by cysts
	Hay Stacks clumps/scrubbers /mats/shaggy mats /hay stacks	4 inches to 30 inches	Grassland biome: rain 10-30 inches cold winters, wind	special structures grip the soil mounds of plant strands hold water reproduction by cysts
	High Hays clumps/scrubbers /mats/shaggy mats /hay stacks/high hays	30 to 60 inches	Edge of Forest Environment	Tangle of plant strands creates platform for continued upward growth reproduction by cysts
	Shawls clumps/scrubbers /mats/ shaggy mats /shawls	1/2 to 2 1/2 inches flat, broad mats	Interior of tropical rain forest	Growth can coat rocks, trees, branches in vine-like growth habit gripping structures on bottom of mat reproduction by cysts

or

2. Use a Diagram to Show Evolutionary Relationships

This chart shows how the life forms are related.

The new species that develop from a parent species are shown going down, for example, the scrubber is the ancestor (parent) of the mats and then the shaggy mats.

Species that develop from a common ancestor are shown side by side, for example, both haystacks and shawls evolved from the shaggy mats.