Have plants been subject to evolution just like animals?

Question

Such as individual species going extinct, changing shape, colour or dimensions, or reproductive patterns.

and/or are, say, the roses, asters or wild flowers we see today the same as would have existed thousands of years ago?

Answer 1

Yes, All life is subject to evolution over long periods of time.

Answer 2

The Bio-sphere is an extremely complicated system within which all life forms depend on the other life forms in their immediate environment, so as animal life evolved, so did plant life.

All animals and plants originally evolved from the first life forms to occupy our planet and whose dominion lasted several hundred million years, which were basically bacteria.  Some bacteria learned how to combine with others in order to create multi-cell organisms, some of which evolved into plant life and some of which evolved into (originally marine) animal life.

Alternatively, you could choose to believe that 'God' created everything just as it is in the present, in my view a belief for the ignorant and the unintelligent.

Darwin was the true Messiah.

Answer 3

Yes, plants evolve as well. Sometimes they evolve in response to animals, for instance flowering plants evolved colourful flowers to attract insects.

The plants that created the coal measures were giant tree ferns which went extinct millions of years ago, although some of their relatives still survive.

Grass only appeared on Earth around the time the dinosaurs went extinct about 65 million years ago.

Today's wild flowers are almost identical to those that were around a few thousand years ago, because that is a tiny space of time in evolutionary terms. A few million years ago many of them would have been noticeably different. Of course, before humans came along there were only wild roses and asters!

Answer 4

First question, yes, absolutely. There are lots of fossils of plants, and we can also use DNA evidence to see how close together different species of plants are, and relate this to how different they are, exactly as with animals.

Second question, cultivated plants (like domesticated animals) change much more quickly than wild plants (or animals), because artificial selection can be made to work much more quickly than natural selection. So the roses of three thousand years ago would look very different, but the wildflowers of 3000 years ago would be quite similar to those around today.

Answer 5

Of course! plants evolved just like animals, and often times, plants and animals evolved together.

Bees and other pollinators such as birds and bats (some species) need flowering plants to survive, and plants need them to spread their pollen.  So a primitive flower would have attracted a certain type of bug/animal, and as time went on, the plant became more specialized, and the animal evolved to meet this specialization to the point that in some species, only one animal species can pollinate one plan type.  

As for roses, and Asters, many of these have been domesticated only in the last 1,000 years or so, but yes, generally the wild flowers you see today would have been around 20,000 years, since the world hasn't changed too much since then, species wise.   Go farther back and you get earlier types of these plants.  As for plant species going extinct, there are more plant fossils in the fossil record than there are animal species, and many of these don't have any living family today.  For example, there is only one species of Ginko Tree living in the world today, but when the dinosaurs ruled the earth, there were many different species.  

This is a very large, and important field of study, and there are lots of internet resources available online.