Tracheophyta

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. The botanical division comprising all vascular plants, those with specialized tissues that conduct water and nutrients through the body
2. A major group of plants that possess xylem and phloem, including ferns, conifers and flowering plants
3. The taxonomic phylum of vascular land plants, distinguished by internal conducting tissues and a dominant sporophyte generation

Etymology: Tracheophyta is the botanical name for the vascular plants, the group that includes ferns, conifers and flowering plants. The name is a New Latin coinage built from Greek roots: "tracheia", meaning "rough" and used for the windpipe, and "phyton", meaning "plant". The word was made by botanists to describe plants whose water-conducting cells form tube-like channels, a feature that set them apart from mosses and other plants lacking such tissue. The "tracheo-" element is the same one found in "trachea", the windpipe, and it appears here because early plant anatomists likened the xylem vessels, which carry water up the stem, to the rings and tubes of an animal's airway. The comparison is a visual one: the spiral and ring markings on these vessels looked like the cartilage rings of the throat. The word is therefore a modern scientific coinage, not an ancient one, and the Greeks who gave their roots their meanings had no concept of xylem.

Synonyms: vascular plants