What it was
One of the first plants to stand up on land. It stood about as tall as your finger, with no roots, no leaves and no wood. Its stems forked like tiny candlesticks.
How it stood up
Pipes. Thin tubes inside the stem, with thickened walls, carried water up from below, and a stem full of pipes can hold itself up. Plants like it had help finding water: stems turned to stone in Scotland about 407 million years ago have a fungus living inside them. The plant paid the fungus in sugar.