The origin of the land plants with the adaptation of a charophyte algal ancestor to a terrestrial habitat was a major event in the history of the Earth, enabling subsequent terrestrialisation events in the animal lineage and the establishment of complex ecosystems on land (Bowman, 2022). Fossil evidence around this event is sparse (reviewed in Bowman, 2022), so much is unknown about the early evolution of the embryophytes. Inferring ancestral characters by comparative analysis of extant species is one way to address this (Delaux et al., 2019). Recently, advances in the phylogenetic diversity of model organisms available for functional genetic analysis and an emerging consensus on the topology of the underlying organismal tree together position this as a promising strategy. However, this approach requires robust inference of gene orthology across vast evolutionary distances.