about one billion years ago

CYTOKINESIS in plant cells is achieved through the construction of a new cell wall between daughter nuclei after mitosis. This process is directed by a cytoskeletal structure called the PHRAGMOPLAST, which is made up in part by two interdigitated discs of parallel microtubules (Fig. 3).

For plants to develop, their cells have to divide. The other components of the cell, for example, the chloroplasts and mitochondria, are distributed between the two future daughter cells. All this takes place in the parent cell. Only then are the daughter cells separated by a new cell wall.

With warmth, oxygen, and good food from the soil, the seed will pop open and sprout. Once the leaves and roots grow, the plant can go through the process of photosynthesis, the process that plants use to breathe and to make food using sunlight.

If so, the one with the shortest lifespan is probably Arabidopsis (a mustard relative) with a seed-to-seed lifespan of about a month.

We are also likely to call a mushroom a plant, whereas genetic comparisons place fungi closer to man than to plants. In other words, the DNA in fungi more closely resembles the DNA of the inhabitants of the animal kingdom. We are nearly 100% alike as humans and equally closely related to mushrooms.

Without fungi to aid in decomposition, all life in the forest would soon be buried under a mountain of dead plant matter. “They break down dead, organic matter and by doing that they release nutrients and those nutrients are then made available for plants to carry on growing.”

One of the main differences between plants and fungi is that fungi have chitin as a component of their cell walls instead of cellulose. Fungi absorb all the nutrients they need from the soil unlike plants which require chlorophyll to conduct photosynthesis.