🍃 THE ORIGIN OF LEAVES
PAGE 1 OF 5, STEMS WITHOUT LEAVES
BEFORE THE LEAF
THE FIRST LAND PLANTS HAD NO LEAVES
When plants first crawled out of the water onto land, they did not look like the trees and flowers you know today. During the Early Devonian period, roughly 420 to 400 million years ago, many early vascular plants were simple branching green stems. The whole stem could photosynthesise. There were no broad flat leaves yet, just forked axes reaching for light in a low, damp world.
⚡ DID YOU KNOW?
Fossils from Scotland's Rhynie chert preserve tiny Early Devonian plants like Cooksonia: Y-shaped green stems only a few centimetres tall, with spore cases at the tips and no leaves at all.
STEMS!
EARLY LOOK
🌱 Forked green stems, no flat leaves
💧 Lived in damp Devonian landscapes
💧 Lived in damp Devonian landscapes
PHOTOSYNTHESIS
☀️ Green stem tissue caught sunlight
🌿 Leaves had not evolved yet
🌿 Leaves had not evolved yet