You will probably find this article hard to follow until we have gone over some of the material to be covered in class. This is an article by Paul Kenrick and Peter Crane that was published 10 years ago in the Journal Nature. Lots has happened over the last 10 years, but this is still a good introductory paper. Do not expect to understand every biological term that you come across in the paper, rather focus on the main themes.
The origin and early evolution of plants on land
This paper was challenging as you had warned us. I think that it provided a bit too much detail for us at this point on such a large topic. It did cover some topics that connected to lecture, but I would have liked an article that covered more of the challenges of plants of land in a broader sense (like the last half of the article).