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Epiphytes
An epiphyte is a plant or plant-like organism that grows on the surface of another plant and derives its moisture and nutrients from the air, rain, water (in marine environments) or from debris accumulating around it. The plants on which epiphytes grow are called phorophytes. Epiphytes take part in nutrient cycles and add to both the diversity and biomass of the ecosystem in which they occur, like any other organism. In some cases, a rainforest tree's epiphytes may total "several tonnes" (several long tons). They are an important source of food for many species. Typically, the older parts of a plant will have more epiphytes growing on them. Epiphytes differ from parasites in that they grow on other plants for physical support and do not necessarily affect the host negatively. An organism that grows on another organism that is not a plant may be called an epibiont. Epiphytes are usually found in the temperate zone (e.g., many mosses, liverworts, lichens, and algae) or in the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tillandsia
''Tillandsia'' is a genus of around 650 species of evergreen, perennial plant, perennial flowering plants in the family (biology), family Bromeliaceae, native to the forests, mountains and deserts of the Neotropical realm, Neotropics, from northern Mexico and the southeastern United States to Mesoamerica and the Caribbean to central Argentina. Their leaves, more or less silvery in color, are covered with specialized cells (trichome, trichomes) capable of rapidly absorbing water that gathers on them. They are also commonly known as air plants because they obtain nutrients and water from the air, not needing soil for nourishment. They have a natural propensity to cling to whatever surfaces are readily available: telephone wires, tree branches, bark, bare rocks, etc. Their light seeds and a silky parachute facilitate their spread. Most ''Tillandsia'' species are epiphytes – which translates to 'upon a plant'. Some are aerophytes, which have a minimal root system and grow on shifti ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Raunkiær Plant Life-form
The Raunkiær system is a system for categorizing plants using life-form categories, devised by Danish botanist Christen C. Raunkiær and later extended by various authors. History It was first proposed in a talk to the ''Danish Botanical Society'' in 1904 as can be inferred from the printed discussion of that talk, but not the talk itself, nor its title. The journal, '' Botanisk Tidsskrift'', published brief comments on the talk by M.P. Porsild, with replies by Raunkiær. A fuller account appeared in French the following year. Raunkiær elaborated further on the system and published this in Danish in 1907.Ch. 2 in Raunkiær (1934): The life-forms of plants and their bearings on geography, p. 2-104. The original note and the 1907 paper were much later translated to English and published with Raunkiær's collected works.Ch. 1 in Raunkiær (1934): Biological types with reference to the adaption of plants to survive the unfavourable season, p. 1. Modernization Raunkiær's life ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Epibiont
An epibiont (from the Ancient Greek meaning "living on top of") is an organism that lives on the surface of another living organism, called the basibiont ("living underneath"). The interaction between the two organisms is called epibiosis. An epibiont is, by definition, harmless to its host. In this sense, the interaction between the two organisms can be considered neutralistic or commensalistic; as opposed to being, for example, parasitic, in which case one organism benefits at the expense of the other, or mutualistic, in which both organisms obtain some explicit benefit from their coexistence. These organisms have evolved various adaptations to exploit their hosts for protection, transportation, or access to resources. Examples of common epibionts are bacteria, barnacles, remoras, and algae, many of which live on the surfaces of larger marine organisms such as whales, sharks, sea turtles, and mangrove trees. Although there is no direct effect of the epibiont to the host, t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Plant Ecology
Plant ecology is a subdiscipline of ecology that studies the distribution and abundance (ecology), abundance of plants, the effects of environmental factors upon the abundance of plants, and the interactions among plants and between plants and other organisms. Examples of these are the distribution of temperate deciduous forests in North America, the effects of drought or flooding upon plant survival, and competition among desert plants for water, or effects of herds of grazing animals upon the composition of grasslands. A global overview of the Earth's major vegetation types is provided by O.W. Archibold. He recognizes 11 major vegetation types: tropical forests, tropical savannas, arid regions (deserts), Mediterranean ecosystems, temperate forest ecosystems, temperate grasslands, coniferous forests, tundra (both polar and high mountain), terrestrial wetlands, freshwater ecosystems and coastal/marine systems. This breadth of topics shows the complexity of plant ecology, sinc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Spanish Moss
Spanish moss (''Tillandsia usneoides'') is an Epiphyte, epiphytic flowering plant that often grows upon large trees in tropical and subtropical climates. It is native to much of Mexico, Bermuda, the Bahamas, Central America, South America (as far south as northern Patagonia), the Southern United States, and West Indies. It has been naturalized in Queensland (Australia). It is known as "grandpa's beard" in French Polynesia. It has the widest distribution of any Bromeliaceae, bromeliad. Most known in the United States, it commonly is found on the southern live oak (''Quercus virginiana'') and bald cypress (''Taxodium distichum'') in the lowlands, swamps, and marshes of the mid-Atlantic and Southeastern states, from the coast of southeastern Virginia to Florida and west to southern Arkansas and Texas. While it superficially resembles its namesake, the lichen ''Usnea'', it is neither a lichen nor a moss (instead being a member of the bromeliad family, Bromeliaceae), and it is not nati ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tillandsia Bourgaei
''Tillandsia bourgaei'' is a species of flowering plant in the family Bromeliaceae. This species is endemic to Southern Mexico Mexico, officially the United Mexican States, is a country in North America. It is the northernmost country in Latin America, and borders the United States to the north, and Guatemala and Belize to the southeast; while having maritime boundar ... and Central America. This species was described and the name validly published by John Gilbert Baker in 1887. Cultivars * ''Tillandsia'' 'Aristocrat' References *BSI Cultivar RegistryRetrieved 11 October 2009 bourgaei Flora of Mexico Taxa named by John Gilbert Baker {{Tillandsia-stub ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mycetozoa
Mycetozoa is a polyphyletic grouping of slime molds. It was originally thought to be a monophyletic clade, but in 2010 it was discovered that protostelia are a polyphyletic group within Conosa. Classification It can be divided into dictyostelid, myxogastrid, and protostelid groups. The mycetozoan groups all fit into the unikont supergroup Amoebozoa, whereas most other slime molds fit into various bikont groups ( fonticulids are opisthokonts). Utility in research The dictyostelids are used as examples of cell communication and differentiation, and may provide insights into how multicellular organisms develop. '' Physarum polycephalum'' are useful for studying cytoplasmic streaming. They have also been used to study the biochemical events that surround mitosis, since all of the nuclei in a medium-sized plasmodium divide in synchrony. It has been observed that they can find their way through mazes by spreading out and choosing the shortest path, an interesting example ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Andreas Franz Wilhelm Schimper
Andreas Franz Wilhelm Schimper (12 May 1856 – 9 September 1901) was a German botanist and phytogeographer who made major contributions in the fields of histology, ecology and plant geography. He travelled to South East Asia and the Caribbean as part of the 1899 deep-sea expedition. He coined the terms tropical rainforest and sclerophyll and is commemorated in numerous specific names. Biography Schimper was born in Strassburg, (present day Strasbourg, France), into a family of eminent scientists. His father Wilhelm Philippe Schimper (1808-1880) was Director of the Natural History Museum in the same town, Professor of Geology, and a leading bryologist. His father's cousin was Georg Wilhelm Schimper (1804-1878), prominent collector and explorer in Arabia and North Africa; the naturalist Karl Friedrich Schimper was also a relative. Schimper studied at the University of Strassburg from 1874 to 1878, acquiring a Ph.D. He then worked in Lyon, and in 1880 travelled to the Un ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cycad
Cycads are seed plants that typically have a stout and woody (ligneous) trunk (botany), trunk with a crown (botany), crown of large, hard, stiff, evergreen and (usually) pinnate leaves. The species are dioecious, that is, individual plants of a species are either male or female. Cycads vary in size from having trunks only a few centimeters to several meters tall. They typically grow slowly and have long lifespans. Because of their superficial resemblance to Arecaceae, palms or ferns, they are sometimes mistaken for them, but they are not closely related to either group. Cycads are gymnosperms (naked-seeded), meaning their fertilization, unfertilized seeds are open to the air to be directly fertilized by pollination, as contrasted with angiosperms, which have enclosed seeds with more complex fertilization arrangements. Cycads have very specialized pollinators, usually a specific beetle, and more rarely a thrips or a moth. Both male and female cycads bear cones (strobilus, stro ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gnetophyta
Gnetophyta () is a division of plants (alternatively considered the subclass Gnetidae or order Gnetales), grouped within the gymnosperms (which also includes conifers, cycads, and ginkgos), that consists of some 70 species across the three relict genera: '' Gnetum'' (family Gnetaceae), '' Welwitschia'' (family Welwitschiaceae), and '' Ephedra'' (family Ephedraceae). The earliest unambiguous records of the group date to the Jurassic, and they achieved their highest diversity during the Early Cretaceous. The primary difference between gnetophytes and other gymnosperms is the presence of vessel elements, a system of small tubes (xylem) that transport water within the plant, similar to those found in flowering plants. Because of this, gnetophytes were once thought to be the closest gymnosperm relatives to flowering plants, but more recent molecular studies have brought this hypothesis into question, with many recent phylogenies finding them to be nested within the conifers. Though it ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Spikemoss
''Selaginella'', also known as spikemosses or lesser clubmosses, is a genus of lycophyte. It is usually treated as the only genus in the family Selaginellaceae, with over 750 known species. This family is distinguished from Lycopodiaceae (the clubmosses) by having scale-leaves bearing a ligule and by having spores of two types. They are sometimes included in an informal paraphyletic group called the "fern allies". The species '' S. moellendorffii'' is an important model organism. Its genome has been sequenced by the United States Department of Energy's Joint Genome Institute. The name ''Selaginella'' was erected by Palisot de Beauvois solely for the species '' Selaginella selaginoides'', which turns out (with the closely related '' Selaginella deflexa'') to be a clade that is sister to all other ''Selaginellas'', so any definitive subdivision of the species into separate genera leaves two taxa in ''Selaginella'', with the hundreds of other species in new or resurrected genera ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Clubmoss
Lycopodiopsida is a class of vascular plants also known as lycopsids, lycopods, or lycophytes. Members of the class are also called clubmosses, firmosses, spikemosses and quillworts. They have dichotomously branching stems bearing simple leaves called microphylls and reproduce by means of spores borne in sporangia on the sides of the stems at the bases of the leaves. Although living species are small, during the Carboniferous, extinct tree-like forms ( Lepidodendrales) formed huge forests that dominated the landscape and contributed to coal deposits. The nomenclature and classification of plants with microphylls varies substantially among authors. A consensus classification for extant (living) species was produced in 2016 by the Pteridophyte Phylogeny Group (PPG I), which places them all in the class Lycopodiopsida, which includes the classes Isoetopsida and Selaginellopsida used in other systems. (See Table 2.) Alternative classification systems have used ranks from div ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
