A cluster of green, leafy liverworts growing on a rough barked tree trunk on the banks of Peterson Creek in Yungaburra, Queensland in Australia.
The Marchantiophyta (/mɑːrˌkæntiˈɒfətə, -oʊˈfaɪtə/ (audio speaker iconlisten)) are a division of non-vascular land plants commonly referred to as hepatics or liverworts. Like mosses and hornworts, they have a gametophyte-dominant life cycle, in which cells of the plant carry only a single set of genetic information. It is estimated that there are about 9000 species of liverworts.[4] Some of the more familiar species grow as a flattened leafless thallus, but most species are leafy with a form very much like a flattened moss. Leafy species can be distinguished from the apparently similar mosses on the basis of a number of features, including their single-celled rhizoids. Leafy liverworts also differ from most (but not all) mosses in that their leaves never have a costa (present in many mosses) and may bear marginal cilia (very rare in mosses). Other differences are not universal for all mosses and liverworts, but the occurrence of leaves arranged in three ranks, the presence of deep lobes or segmented leaves, or a lack of clearly differentiated stem and leaves all point to the plant being a liverwort.
Size: 4024px × 6048px
Location: Yungaburra, Far North Queensland, Australia
Photo credit: © Marco Trovalusci Photography / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
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