All land plants originated from a single evolutionary event when freshwater algae got a foothold on land. The group of algae that would later give rise to land plants had already been living in freshwater and terrestrial habitats for over one billion years. A tiny group of these algae, most distantly related to land plants, still lives. A team homed in on one species, Chlorokybus, which lives in wet soil and rock cracks, to find that it contains not one, but at least five different species.
