Plants are living organisms that belong to the kingdom Plantae. They are predominantly photosynthetic, meaning that they obtain their energy from sunlight, using chloroplasts derived from endosymbiosis with cyanobacteria to produce sugars from carbon dioxide and water, using the green pigment chlorophyll. Plants are essential for any ecosystem, as they provide all the energy for the ecosystem by getting energy directly from sunlight through a process called photosynthesis. They use energy from the sun to grow and reproduce, and they also must get nutrients from the soil. Plants can be divided into two groups: flowering plants and non-flowering plants. Land plants are multicellular organisms that can be distinguished from other living things by a number of characteristics. Some key characteristics of plants include:

• They make their own food through photosynthesis.
• They store their food as starch.
• Most plants are rooted to one place.
• Plant cell walls are rigid as they’re made of cellulose.
• The life cycle of plants includes both a sporophyte and a gametophyte generation.
• Plants can be either vascular or non-vascular.

Plants are often the dominant physical and structural component of the habitats where they occur. Many of the Earths biomes are named for the type of vegetation because plants are the dominant organisms in those biomes, such as grassland, savanna, and tropical rainforest. People use plants for many purposes, such as building materials, ornaments, writing materials, and, in great variety, for medicines. The scientific study of plants is known as botany, a branch of biology.