Bryophytes

Liverworts are a group of non-vascular land plants forming the division Marchantiophyta (). They may also be referred to as hepatics. Like mosses and hornworts, they have a gametophyte-dominant life cycle, in which cells of the plant carry only a single set of genetic information. The division name was derived from the genus name Marchantia, named after his father by French botanist Jean Marchant.

thumb|An example of moss (Bryophyta) on the forest floor in Broken Bow, Oklahoma

Hornworts are a group of non-vascular Embryophytes (land plants) constituting the division Anthocerotophyta (). The common name refers to the elongated horn-like structure, which is the sporophyte. As in mosses and liverworts, hornworts have a gametophyte-dominant life cycle, in which cells of the plant carry only a single set of genetic information; the flattened, green plant body of a hornwort is the gametophyte stage of the plant.

Rhizoids are protuberances that extend from the lower epidermal cells of bryophytes and algae. They are similar in structure and function to the root hairs of vascular land plants. Similar structures are formed by some fungi. Rhizoids may be unicellular or multicellular.

thumb|Protonematal cells of the moss [[Physcomitrella patens]] A protonema (plural: protonemata) is a thread-like chain of cells that forms the earliest stage of development of the gametophyte (the haploid phase) in the life cycle of mosses. When a moss first grows from a spore, it starts as a germ tube, which lengthens and branches into a filamentous complex known as a protonema, from which a leafy gametophore, the adult form of a gametophyte in bryophytes, grows. Protonemata are filamentous in mosses, thalloid or globose in liverworts, and globose in hornworts.

The Setaphyta are a clade within the division Bryophyta sensu lato which includes Marchantiophytina (liverworts) and Bryophytina (mosses). Excluded are the Anthocerotophytina (hornworts). A 2018 study found through molecular sequencing that liverworts are more closely related to mosses than hornworts, with the implication that liverworts were not among the first species to colonize land.