Absolutely. The trick is that there are three kind of related biological concepts that all used to be more or less just called “plants”:
- An evolutionary lineage;
- Things that live by photosynthesis producing oxygen;
- Things that have vegetative growth patterns.
We haven’t straightened out all of the terms. The first is for sure the most unambiguous and useful meaning. But even biologists will often talk about things like phytoplankton as “microscopic plants” even though many are unrelated, because what else do you call them?
I think fungi are kind of the same…by now we know they aren’t really plants, but they have cell walls and indeterminate growth patterns and spores like at least cryptogams, get studied by botanists, and can be eaten by vegans. Clearly often when we say “plant” we mean mostly true plants but also things like them and algae too, and in absence of another term I’m not sure what else to say.
