Spermatophyte plants that have unenclosed, "naked seeds": The fifth extant division is the flowering plants, also known as angiosperms or magnoliophytes, the largest and most diverse group of spermatophytes. Angiosperms possess seeds enclosed in a fruit, unlike gymnosperms. In addition to the taxa listed above, the fossil record contains evidence of many extinct taxa of seed plants. The so-called "seed ferns" (Pteridospermae) were one of the earliest successful groups of land plants, and forests dominated by seed ferns were prevalent in the late Paleozoic. "Glossopteris" was the most prominent tree genus in the ancient southern supercontinent of Gondwana during the Permian
Evolutionary history of plants billion years ago, and that communities of complex, multicellular photosynthesizing organisms existed on land in the late Precambrian, around . Evidence of the emergence of embryophyte land plants first occurs in the mid-Ordovician (~), and by the middle of the Devonian (~), many of the features recognised in land plants today were present, including roots and leaves. Late Devonian (~) free-sporing plants such as "Archaeopteris" had secondary vascular tissue that produced wood and had formed forests of tall trees. Also by late Devonian, "Elkinsia", an early seed fern, had evolved seeds. Evolutionary innovation continued into the Carboniferous and still continues