Plants and trees are in the kingdom Plantae. The first plants invaded the land around 450 million years ago, which were thought to have evolved from multicellular algae. After about 50 million years they had carpeted the land with a thick mat of low shrubbery. This saw the rest of life take shape, and the first mites, spiders, centipedes, and insects could colonise the land. After this, evolving from lobe finned fish, came the amphibians. Around 340 years before present, the pioneer plants had given way to forests of lycophyte trees, horsetails, and ferns. Then in turn, after 100 million years, these gave way to the tropical vegetation of ferns, conifers, cycadeoids, and cycads. After another 100 million years the flowering plants, or angiosperms, dominated the land. During this time tropical rainforests were assembling the greatest biodiversity on Earth.

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