Around 470 million years ago, land plants evolved from a charophycean algal ancestor. Many of their lineages, such as Sporogonites, Cooksonia and Baragwanathia (shown here), became extinct, while others have come to dominate most terrestrial habitats.

See Bowman

Sweet potato weevils are a major crop pest, causing substantial economic and environmental harm in the tropics and subtropics. Identifying genes conveying resistance to weevils, such as SPWR1 and SPWR2, is a route to eco-friendly pest management.

See Liu, et al.

Mangroves form important but fragile coastline ecosystems in many tropical and warm temperate areas. Research programs must be shaped by their contribution to ecosystem services, their responses to extreme climatic events and their social-ecological significance.

See Dahdouh-Guebas et al.

Ferns are close relatives of seed plants, and together they form the euphyllophyte clade, which contains almost all vascular plants. The genome of the maidenhair fern (Adiantum capillus-veneris L.) provides a window on the evolution of both groups and on their pathogen resistance mechanisms.

See Fang et al.

Ferns are close relatives of seed plants, and together they form the euphyllophyte clade, which contains almost all vascular plants. The genome of the maidenhair fern (Adiantum capillus-veneris L.) provides a window on the evolution of both groups and on their pathogen resistance mechanisms.

See Fang et al.

At the COP26 climate summit the world’s leaders pledged to end deforestation by 2030 to limit global warming. Achieving that aim is harder than proposing it, but the REDD+ scheme is striving to provide the solution.

See Pauly, M. & Tosteson, J.

Flowers are the defining invention of the angiosperm lineage. Their diversity arises from the control of development of the shoot apical meristem, whose systems appear to have arisen from an ancient gene duplication.

See Hirakawa, Y.

Leaf mesophyll consists of a mesh of interconnected cells and air spaces. This forms by precise spatial and temporal variations in the plane of successive cell divisions. The pattern of development of spongy tissue is reliant on the microtubule-associated protein CLASP.

See Zhang, L. & Ambrose, C.

The genome of the flying spider-monkey tree fern, Alsophila spinulosa, is over 6 gigabases distributed across 69 pseudo-chromosomes. Tree ferns were most abundant during the Jurassic period, and genomic analysis identifies genetic bottlenecks causing demographic declines of A. spinulosa.

See Xiong Huang et al.

Cycads, such as Cycas panzhihuaensis, are one of the most ancient lineages of living seed plants. The genome of C. panzhihuaensis illuminates both the evolution of seeds and a mechanism of sex determination shared with Ginkgo.

See Yang Liu et al.

Potato tubers are specialized structures for storing carbon underground, helping the plant survive the winter. A single gene, BRANCHED1b, blocks the accumulation of sugars in above-ground plant organs. Its loss results in tubers growing on shoots.

See Nicolas, M. et al.

Fossil flowers preserved in amber show that members of the genus Phylica have been blooming for over 99 million years. Closely related flowers of Eophylica priscastellata exhibit fire-adaption traits identical to those of modern taxa in fire-prone ecosystems.

See Chao Shi et al.

2022 is the United Nations International Year of Glass. Exquisite models such as those pictured on our cover can be created in this medium. Also, the exotic properties of glasses and related materials can be exploited in many situations, including within living plants.

See Editorial