The Charophyta are a division of green algae, that includes the closest relatives of the embryophyte plants.
Land plants evolved from green algae. Researchers have identified green algae called charophytes as the closest relatives of land plants.
What is the evidence for this relationship, and what does it suggest about the algal ancestors of land plants. Let's try to resolve this by reading the next paragraph.
Morphological and Molecular Evidence: Many key traits of land plants also appear in some protists, primarily algae. For example, plants are multicellular, eukaryotic, photosynthetic autotrophs, as are brown, red, and certain green algae. Plants have cell walls made of cellulose, and so do green algae, dinoflagellates, and brown algae. And chloroplasts with chlorophylls a and b are present in green algae, euglenids, and a few dinoflagellates, as well as in plants. However, the charophytes are the only algae that share the following four distinctive traits with land plants, strongly suggesting that they are the closest relatives of plants. Analyzes of nuclear and chloroplast genes from a wide range of plants and algae indicate that charophytes–particularly Chara and Coleochaete–are the closest living relatives of land plants.