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Where do gymnosperms live?

Updated: 8/10/2023
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13y ago

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Gymnosperms comprise all the coniferous trees and shrubs, so they are found just about everywhere. Examples are pine, spruce, juniper, cedar, larch, fir, sequoia and cypress. They are non-flowering and produce seeds on cones.

Gymnosperms, chiefly conifers, are located throughout the tropics, coastal regions, and in the western United States.

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8y ago
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11y ago

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The gymnosperms are a group of seed-bearing plants that includes conifers, cycads, Ginkgo, and Gnetales. The term "gymnosperm" comes from the Greek word gymnospermos(γυμνόσπερμος), meaning "naked seeds", after the unenclosed condition of their seeds (called ovules in their unfertilized state). Their naked condition stands in contrast to the seeds or ovules of flowering plants (angiosperms), which are enclosed during pollination. Gymnosperm seeds develop either on the surface of scale- or leaf-like appendages of cones, or at the end of short stalks (Ginkgo).

The gymnosperms and angiosperms together comprise the spermatophytes or seed plants. By far the largest group of living gymnosperms are the conifers (pines, cypresses, and relatives), followed by cycads, Gnetales (Gnetophyta, Ephedra and Welwitschia), and Ginkgo (a single living species).

Now, in simpler English:

Gymnospems ("Gym-no-sperms") and Angiosperms ("Anne-gee-oh-sperms," with a soft "g" as in "gee whiz") together make up the "seed-bearing" plants (also known as the "higher plants"), as opposed to more primitive plants such as mosses and ferns, which reproduce by spores rather than seeds. The main difference between the two modern groups is that the Angiosperms are also known as the "Flowering Plants," having both flowers and fruit, neither of which the more primitive Gymnosperms possess. A way to remember which is which is the phrase: "Angio for Apple," since an apple is a fruit, linking Angiosperms with flowering, fruiting plants.

Gymnosperms are ancient, older than the dinosaurs (Angiosperms only spread throughout the world at about the time the dinosaurs were dying out). They were the first plants capable of settling in the arid uplands-- earlier plants had to remain near water in order to breed. Prior to the Gymnosperms, there was plant life only in and near open water... the Gymnosperms were the first to turn most of this planet green.

To answer the specific question, over three quarters of the Gymnosperms are the conifers, commonly called pine trees or softwoods, found on every continent except Antarctica in vast forests everywhere conditions are too harsh for Angiosperms to thrive.

The next most numerous group (about 15%), the Cycads, are often mistaken for palms or ferns, but are only distantly related to these groups. Cycadsare found in the tropics worldwide.

About half as numerous as the Cycads are the Gnetales (there is no common name for the whole group in English), which consist of three groups: the Ephedra, the Gnetum, and the Welwitschia. The largest group, Ephedra, live in the desert southwest of the United States, the west coast of South America, and in a broad band along Southern Europe and North Africa, stretching east across Asia almost to the Kamchatka Peninsula. Gnetum can be found only in north tropical South America, tropical West Africa, and Tropical Asia. The last and smallest group consists of only a single species, Welwitschia Mirabiles, and it lives only in the Namib Desert of southwest Africa.

The final group of Gymnosperms also consists of only a single species: Ginkgo Bilboa, and it has been cultivated for thousands of years in China, hundreds of years in Japan, America and Europe, and it's survival in the wild is questionable.

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15y ago

habitats are hot regions because of their short stems take in more,easier and quiker in absorbing water.

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11y ago

Seeds of Gymnosperms are produced in cones (e.g. Pine, Spruce)

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13y ago

They live in cold areas

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12y ago

They are found everywhere but Antarctica

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9y ago

Gymnosperms are found on land.

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