Plant Press Arizona, Winter 2021, is now published and is available to all online.
Posted Jan 25, 2022
Featuring an Introduction to Arizona’s “Lower Plants” and Plant-Like Wonders.
Arizona’s native plant admirers are most likely to focus their botanical attention on what are known as the “higher plants” for several fairly obvious reasons. Among those are the fact that the higher plants are normally the dominant component of most floras and that thanks to their highly evolved reproductive structures (i.e., flowers in the Angiosperms, the flowering plants), and typically interesting cones and foliage in the Gymnosperms (e.g. conifers), as well as beautiful leaf patterns in the ferns and their allies (e.g., the horsetails), these plants are a joy to discover, explore, and study. However, there are many other types of fascinating “lower plants” and plant-like organisms that await discovery for those who may have focused their attention mainly on the “higher plants.” In this issue of Plant Press Arizona we wish to provide an overview of some of the major groups of fascinating “lower plants” and plant-like organisms by describing the general characteristics of each group and briefly outlining typical locations in Arizona where they can be found.
