Species Distribution ... Biogeography is the study of the distribution of biodiversity over space and time. It is very useful in understanding species distribution through factors such as speciation, extinction, continental drift, glaciation, variation of sea levels, river capture and available resources...
Tree Worship ... The image of the Tree of life is also a favourite in many mythologies. Various forms of trees of life also appear in folklore, culture and fiction, often relating to immortality or fertility...
Herbivore ... Herbivory usually refers to animals eating plants; fungi, bacteria and protists that feed on living plants are usually termed plant pathogens (plant diseases),and microbes that feed on dead plants are saprotrophs...
Issues Relating To Biofuels ... According to Francisco Blanch, a commodity strategist for Merrill Lynch, crude oil would be trading 15 per cent higher and gasoline would be as much as 25 per cent more expensive, if it were not for biofuels. Gordon Quaiattini, president of the Canadian Renewable Fuels Association, argued that a healthy supply of alternative energy sources will help to combat gasoline price spikes...
Phytogeography ... Gross patterns of the distribution of plants became apparent early on in the study of plant geography...
Plant Hormone ... Hormones are vital to plant growth, and, lacking them, plants would be mostly a mass of undifferentiated cells... They are used to regulate the growth of cultivated plants, weeds, and in vitro-grown plants and plant cells; these manmade compounds are called Plant Growth Regulators or PGRs for short...
Plant Pathology ... The fungi reproduce both sexually and asexually via the production of spores and other structures. Spores may be spread long distances by air or water, or they may be soil borne...
Photosynthesis ... Eventually, no later than a billion years ago, one of these protists formed a symbiotic relationship with a cyanobacterium, producing the ancestor of many plants and algae...
Bryophyte ... Although a 2005 study supported the traditional view that the bryophytes form a monophyletic group, the preponderance of currently available evidence suggests that the hornworts are sister to vascular plants and liverworts are sister to all other land plants, as shown in the cladogram below... embryophytes tracheophytes hornworts mosses liverworts bryophytes When extinct plants are taken into account, the picture is slightly altered... There are extinct land plants, such as the horneophytes, which are not bryophytes, but also are not vascular plants since like bryophytes they do not have true vascular tissue...
Algae ... Though the prokaryotic cyanobacteria (commonly referred to as blue-green algae) were traditionally included as "algae" in older textbooks, many modern sources regard this as outdated as they are now considered to be bacteria. The term algae is now restricted to eukaryotic organisms...
French Landscape Garden ... Descriptions of English gardens were first brought to France by the Abbé LeçBlanc, who published accounts of his voyage in 1745 and 1751. A treatise on the English garden, Observations on Modern Gardening, written by Thomas Whately and published in London in 1770, was translated into French in 1771...
Sacred Grove ... In central Italy, the town of Nemi recalls the Latin nemus Aricinum, or "grove of Ariccia", a small town a quarter of the way around the lake. In Antiquity the area had no town, but the grove was the site of one of the most famous of Roman cults and temples: that of Diana Nemorensis, a study of which served as the seed for Sir James Frazer's seminal work on the anthropology of religion, The Golden Bough...
Light-dependent Reactions ... The light-dependent reactions take place on the thylakoid membrane inside a chloroplast. The inside of the thylakoid membrane is called the lumen, and outside the thylakoid membrane is the stroma, where the light-independent reactions take place...
Fern ... The term pteridophyte also refers to ferns and a few other seedless vascular plants (see classification section below)... Ferns first appear in the fossil record 360 million years ago in the Carboniferous but many of the current families and species did not appear until roughly 145 million years ago in the early Cretaceous (after flowering plants came to dominate many environments)...
Shrub ... Shrubs as a botanical structural form In botany and ecology a shrub is more specifically used to describe the particular physical structural or plant life-form of woody plants which are less than 8 metres (26 ft) high and usually have many stems arising at or near the base...
Spermatophyte ... A middle Devonian precursor to seed plants from Belgium has been identified predating the earliest seed plants by about 20 million years... Runcaria has all of the qualities of seed plants except for a solid seed coat and a system to guide the pollen to the seed... Relationships and nomenclature Further information: Gnetophyta#Classification Seed-bearing plants were traditionally divided into angiosperms, or flowering plants, and gymnosperms, which includes the gnetophytes, cycads, ginkgo, and conifers...
Phytochemistry ... Constituent elements The list of simple elements of which plants are primarily constructed—carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, calcium, phosphorus, etc.—is not different from similar lists for animals, fungi, or even bacteria... The fundamental atomic components of plants are the same as for all life; only the details of the way in which they are assembled differs...
Plant Defense Against Herbivory ... Other defensive strategies used by plants include escaping or avoiding herbivores in time or in place, for example by growing in a location where plants are not easily found or accessed by herbivores, or by changing seasonal growth patterns... Historically, insects have been the most significant herbivores, and the evolution of land plants is closely associated with the evolution of insects... The study of plant defenses against herbivory is important, not only from an evolutionary view point, but also in the direct impact that these defenses have on agriculture, including human and livestock food sources; as beneficial 'biological control agents' in biological pest control programs; as well as in the search for plants of medical importance...
Tree ... The majority of tree species grow in tropical regions of the world and many of these areas have not been surveyed yet by botanists, making species diversity and ranges poorly understood.t The earliest tree-like organisms were tree ferns, horsetails and lycophytes, which grew in forests in the Carboniferous period, however these were plants were not trees, since they lacked woody tissue... Trees evolved in the Triassic period, with conifers, ginkgos, cycads and other gymnosperms appeared producing woody tissue, and were subsequently followed by tree-form flowering plants in the Cretaceous period...
Italian Renaissance Garden ... In the late Renaissance, the gardens became larger, grander and more symmetrical, and were filled with fountains, statues, grottoes, water organs and other features designed to delight their owners and amuse and impress visitors. The style was imitated throughout Europe, influencing the gardens of the French Renaissance and the English garden...
Biological Dispersal ... Biological dispersal may be contrasted with geodispersal, which is the mixing of previously isolated populations (or whole biotas) following the erosion of geographic barriers to dispersal or gene flow (Lieberman, 2005; Albert and Reis, 2011). Types of dispersal At some time during its life, an organism, whether animal or plant, moves, or is moved, so that it or its offspring do not die exactly where they were born...
Medieval Gardening ... For the purposes of this article, the European medieval era will be considered to span from 400 to 1400 CE, though appropriate references may be made to earlier and later times. Gardening is the deliberate cultivation of plants herbs, fruits, flowers, or vegetables...
Shrubland ... Shrubland species generally show a wide range of adaptations to fire, such as heavy seed production, lignotubers, and fire-induced germination. Shrubland as a botanical structural form In botany and ecology a shrub is defined as a much-branched woody plant less than 8 m high and usually with many stems...
Photomorphogenesis ... Typically, plants are responsive to wavelengths of light in the blue, red and far-red regions of the spectrum through the action of several different photosensory systems... Photoreceptor systems in plants Plants use phytochrome to detect and respond to red and far-red wavelengths...
Plant Life-form ... Plant construction types may be used in a broader sense to emcompass planktophytes, benthophytes (mainly algae) and terrestrial plants... History The term life-form was first coined by Eugenius Warming ("livsform") in his 1895 book Plantesamfund, but was translated to "growthform" in the 1909 English version Oecology of Plants... The classification was based on his meticulous observations while raising wild plants from seed in the Copenhagen Botanical Garden...