Evolutionary history of plants foliage consisted of fern-like fronds, although they were not closely related to ferns. The oldest fossil evidence of seed plants is of Late Devonian age, and they appear to have evolved out of an earlier group known as the progymnosperms. These early seed plants ranged from trees to small, rambling shrubs; like most early progymnosperms, they were woody plants with fern-like foliage. They all bore ovules, but no cones, fruit or similar. While it is difficult to track the early evolution of seeds, the lineage of the seed ferns may be traced from the simple trimerophytes through homosporous Aneurophytes. This
International Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants agriculture for export is increasingly recognized as being unwise. Second, given the lack of empirical evidence to support this, it would make sense to encourage debate, exchange of knowledge and research on the impacts of UPOV type plant variety protection on farming, food, human rights and other public interest objectives. However, UPOV seems to be resisting this, for instance by keeping meetings secret, not making its documents available and [refusing farmers' organisations observer status with UPOV. A recent study by Professor Graham Dutfield exploring the role of UPOV concluded that UPOV's governance falls short in many different ways. In addition,