> (Apparently in some mosses it's the other way around.)

mosses are, uh "early" in land plant evolution history. the generations are more on equal footing, but there was a switch from the haploid generation being the green part, to the diploid generation being the green part, and the switch was made in the transition from mosses to ferns, the, uh, "next step" of land plant evolution.
(the scare quotes are there because technically, evolution doesn't "work like that", much like modern apes aren't the ancestor to humans)

for anyone wanting to learn more about this kind of stuff, this is pretty standard biology lecture material. it's typically this pair of introductory lectures that goes through the evolutionary history of plants/animals, respectively. iirc the professor dave explains youtube channel has them in a playlist video format.

it's very visible with mosses though, where the green part of the moss is the haploid gametophyte, and the "stalks" that stretch up from the green parts are the diploid sporophytes.

https://hikersnotebook.blog/2026/09/01/hay-scented-fern/

I'll keep an eye out for dinosaurs as well.

I have a running joke about ferns with my son (which he found exciting when younger, now just embarrassing) having watched lots of TV shows about dinosaurs, especially huge sauropods who ate tons of ferns.

"Uh oh, I see some ferns over there. Better watch out for dinosaurs!"

Now we'd better keep an eye out for gametophytes as well.

Now you've got me curious about mosses!

This "chromosome hoarding" likely explains why these ancient plants have survived so many mass extinction events

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fern_spike

https://www.nybg.org/planttalk/how-ferns-outlived-the-dinosaurs-and-why-that-matters-today/

https://bioone.org/journals/american-fern-journal/volume-116/issue-2/0002-8444-116.2.109/How-to-Survive-a-Mass-Extinction--Lessons-from-Fern/10.1640/0002-8444-116.2.109.full

https://eng.geus.dk/about/news/news-archive/2019/oct/mutant-ferns

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/07/260722032105.htm

It's not so much that the plants would lack the machinery needed for locomotion, like molecular motors or polymerisation of cytoskeleton elements, it is that the way they're used for locomotion outside the animal kingdom generally works in liquids only, while when thinking plants we think land plants which mostly need to be able to function in dry environments.

https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/10.1161/CIRCRESAHA.119.315408

The other side comment, the thing that most recently blew my mind is extrachromosomal DNA in human cancers. You can observe some of the evolutionary trickery leveraged by neoplasms within an organism.

I think the polyploidy is kept, with multiple near-duplicate chromosomes, but there's a difference between the haploid stage of the life cycle where there are N chromosomes and the diploid stage where there are 2N.

(I'm not an expert on this stuff!)

I'm not sure either to understand when that would result in an increase of chromosome numbers, or do you mean that chromosome number increase as in other species results from division errors, but that this polyploidy is kept? But then what does it mean to be bi/haploid ?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnivorous_plant#Snap_traps

But other plants move for other reasons.