what are the terestrial plants state their general characters
Answers
Terrestrial plants are any plants adapted to live on land.
They differ from true aquatics that can only live in water (like kelp), or amphibious plants that can be inundated (such as Amazon swords of the aquarium hobby). Terrestrial plants have cuticles thathelp mediate water loss.
Land plants first evolved some 400 + million years ago in the Devonian. Cooksonia was of the first vascular land plants. These would be followed by mosses, horsetails, ferns, gymnosperms. Modern flowering plants, angiosperms would not evolve to the mid Cretaceous over 100 million years ago. (In fact, they probably co-evolved with bees and wasps.)
Land palnts can be true terrestrials, living in the ground; some are lithophytes, growing on rocks; still others are epiphytes, growing on trees and shrubs (many ferns, peperomias, bromeliads, orchids, etc.—these are quite prevalent in tropical rainforests).
The distinction between aquatic and terrestrial plants is often blurred because many terrestrial plants are able to tolerate periodic submersion and many aquatic species have both submersed and emersedforms. There are relatively few obligate submersed aquatic plants (species that cannot tolerate emersion for even relatively short periods), but some examples include members of Hydrocharitaceae and Cabombaceae, Ceratophyllum, and Aldrovanda, and most macroalgae (e.g. Charaand Nitella). Most aquatic plants can, or prefer to, grow in the emersed form, and most only flower in that form. Many terrestrial plants can tolerate extended periods of inundation, and this is often part of the natural habitat of the plant where flooding is common. These plants (termed helophytes) tolerate extended periods of waterlogging around the roots and even complete submersion under flood waters. Growth rates of helophytes decrease significantly during these periods of complete submersion and if water levels do not recede the plant will ultimately decline and perish.