In land plants, the plastids that contain chlorophyll can perform photosynthesis, thereby creating internal chemical energy from external sunlight energy while capturing carbon from Earths atmosphere and furnishing the atmosphere with life-giving oxygen. These are the chlorophyll-plastids'and they are named chloroplasts; (see top graphic). 
Other plastids can synthesize fatty acids and terpenes, which may be used to produce energy or as raw material to synthesize other molecules. For example, plastid epidermal cells manufacture the components of the tissue system known as  plant cuticle, including its epicuticular wax, from palmitic acidwhich itself is synthesized in the chloroplasts of the mesophyll tissue. Plastids function to store different components including starches, fats, and proteins. 
All plastids are derived from proplastids, which are present in the meristematic regions of the plant. Proplastids and young chloroplasts typically divide by binary fission, but more mature chloroplasts also have this capacity.
Plant proplastids (undifferentiated plastids) may differentiate into several forms, depending upon which function they perform in the cell, (see top graphic). They may develop into any of the following variants:
* Chloroplasts: typically green plastids that perform photosynthesis. 
** Etioplasts: precursors of chloroplasts.
* Chromoplasts: coloured plastids that synthesize and store pigments.
* Gerontoplasts: plastids that control the dismantling of the photosynthetic apparatus during plant senescence.
* Leucoplasts: colourless plastids that synthesize monoterpenes.
Leucoplasts differentiate into even more specialized plastids, such as:
* the aleuroplasts;
** Amyloplasts: storing starch and detecting gravityfor maintaining geotropism.
** Elaioplasts: storing fats.
** Proteinoplasts: storing and modifying protein.
* or Tannosomes: synthesizing and producing tannins and polyphenols.
Depending on their morphology and target function, plastids have the ability to differentiate or redifferentiate between these and other forms.