Viridiplantae
| Viridiplantae Temporal range:
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|---|---|
| An assortment of thallophyte Viridiplantae in a rock pool, Taiwan | |
| Scientific classification | |
| Domain: | Eukaryota |
| Clade: | Diaphoretickes |
| Clade: | CAM |
| Clade: | Archaeplastida |
| Clade: | Viridiplantae Cavalier-Smith, 1981 |
| Subgroups | |
| Synonyms | |
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Viridiplantae (kingdom Plantae sensu stricto), the green plants, is a natural group or clade of around half a million eukaryotes. They are green because they contain chloroplasts, cell organelles able to produce food by photosynthesis. They are major primary producers of food both in the sea and on land. The group includes both green algae and the land plants (embryophytes) that arose from them.
In 2005, Sina Adl and colleagues proposed the name Chloroplastida for the group. In 2012, Frederik Leliaert and colleagues suggested a revised taxonomy of the Viridiplantae. In 2019, M. Leebens-Mack and colleagues proposed a phylogeny based on analysis of over a thousand plant genomes. It renders the former "chlorophyte algae" and "streptophyte algae" paraphyletic, as the land plants arose from within them.