Vascular Plants

Vascular plants, also called tracheophytes of Clade Tracheophyta, form a large group of land plants with a confirmed 300,000 species in real life. They are defined as:

1. Vascular plants have vascular tissues (hence the name) which distribute resources through the plant. Two kinds of vascular tissue occur in plants: xylem and phloem. Phloem and xylem are closely associated with one another and are typically located immediately adjacent to each other in the plant. The combination of one xylem and one phloem strand adjacent to each other is known as a vascular bundle. The evolution of vascular tissue in plants allowed them to evolve to larger sizes than non-vascular plants, which lack these specialized conducting tissues and are thereby restricted to relatively small sizes.
2. In vascular plants, the principal generation or phase is the sporophyte, which produces spores and is diploid (having two sets of chromosomes per cell). (By contrast, the principal generation phase in non-vascular plants is the gametophyte, which produces gametes and is haploid - with one set of chromosomes per cell.)
3. Vascular plants have true roots, leaves, and stems, even if some groups have secondarily lost one or more of these traits.