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Smilax Sect. Nemexia
''Smilax'' sect. ''Nemexia'' is a section of plants in the family Smilacaceae. It consists of the herbaceous plants within the genus ''Smilax''. ''Smilax'' species fall into two groups with distinctive morphologies: one group has woody perennial stems with thorns and a vining habit, while the other group has herbaceous stems that die back to the ground each winter. ''S.'' sect. ''Nemexia'' is the taxon that comprises the herbaceous species. In the past it was often a genus of its own under the name ''Nemexia'' and taxonomists still need further study of the species of ''Smilax'' to determine its proper rank.Fu, C., H. Kong, Y. Qiu, K. M. Cameron. 2005Molecular phylogeny of the East Asian-North American disjunct ''Smilax'' sect. ''Nemexia'' (Smilacaceae).''International Journal of Plant Sciences'', 166(2): 301-309. However the widely accepted taxonomic system of the ''Flora of North America'' does not recognize ''Nemexia'', nor does thAP-site Thus ''Nemexia'' is not currently ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Smilax Biltmoreana
''Smilax biltmoreana'', common name Biltmore's carrionflower, is a North American plant species native to the southeastern United States. It is concentrated in the Great Smoky Mountains but with outlying populations in Virginia, North and South Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky, Georgia, Alabama, and northern Florida Florida is a state located in the Southeastern region of the United States. Florida is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the northwest by Alabama, to the north by Georgia, to the east by the Bahamas and Atlantic Ocean, and to .... ''Smilax biltmoreana'' is a herb with erect stems up to 60 cm (2 feet) tall. Leaves are egg-shaped to heart-shaped, with wax on the underside but no hairs. Flowers are small and greenish, fruits dark blue. The species epiteet ''biltmoreana'' refers to the Biltmore Estate in Asheville, North Carolina, once owned by George Washington Vanderbilt. Vanderbilt sponsored a significant number of botanical studies in the Am ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Carrion Flower
Carrion flowers, also known as corpse flowers or stinking flowers, are mimetic flowers that emit an odor that smells like rotting flesh. Apart from the scent, carrion flowers often display additional characteristics that contribute to the mimesis of a decaying corpse. These include their specific coloration (red, purple, brown), the presence of setae and orifice-like flower architecture. Carrion flowers attract mostly scavenging flies and beetles as pollinators. Some species may trap the insects temporarily to ensure the gathering and transfer of pollen. Plants known as "carrion flower" ''Amorphophallus'' Many plants in the genus '' Amorphophallus'' (family Araceae) are known as carrion flowers. One such plant is the Titan arum ('' Amorphophallus titanum''), which has the world's largest unbranched inflorescence. Rather than a single flower, the titan arum presents an inflorescence or compound flower composed of a spadix or stalk of small and anatomically reduced male and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Smilax Riparia
''Smilax'' is a genus of about 300–350 species, found in the tropics and subtropics worldwide. In China for example about 80 are found (39 of which are Endemism, endemic), while there are 20 in North America north of Mexico. They are climbing flowering plants, many of which are woody and/or thorny, in the monocotyledon family (biology), family Smilacaceae, native throughout the tropical and subtropical regions of the world. Common names include ''catbriers'', ''greenbriers'', ''prickly-ivys'' and ''smilaxes''. ''Sarsaparilla'' (also zarzaparrilla, sarsparilla) is a name used specifically for the Jamaican ''Smilax ornata, S. ornata'' as well as a catch-all term in particular for American species. Occasionally, the non-woody species such as the Smilax herbacea, smooth herbaceous greenbrier (''S. herbacea'') are separated as genus ''Nemexia''; they are commonly known by the rather ambiguous name carrion flower, ''carrion flowers''. Greenbriers get their scientific name from the G ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Smilax Jamesii
''Smilax jamesii'' is a species of flowering plant in the greenbriar family known by the common name English Peak greenbriar. It is to northern California, where it is known from the Klamath Mountains and the southernmost peaks of the Cascade Range. It has also been reported from nearby locations in southwestern Oregon. It grows in moist areas such as lakesides and streambanks in mountain coniferous forest habitat. It was discovered to be a new species when herbarium specimens thought to be '' Smilax californica'' were reexamined. This is a rhizomatous perennial herb taking the form of a vine, climbing and branching to maximum lengths of 2 to 3 meters. The dark green leaves have blades up to 8 centimeters long by 7 wide, triangular to pointed oval in shape. There are numerous tendrils. The inflorescence is an umbel-shaped cluster of flowers blooming from the leaf axils. Male inflorescences contain up to 20 flowers, and the larger female inflorescences may have 40. The male and f ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Smilax Lasioneuron
''Smilax lasioneura'', the Blue Ridge carrionflower, is a North American species of flowering plants in the greenbriar family. It is widespread across central Canada and the central United States, from Ontario, Manitoba and Saskatchewan south to Texas, Louisiana, and Florida Florida is a state located in the Southeastern region of the United States. Florida is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the northwest by Alabama, to the north by Georgia, to the east by the Bahamas and Atlantic Ocean, and to .... ''Smilax lasioneura'' is an erect, branching herb up to 250 cm (5 feet) tall. Flowers are small but numerous, in umbels of many flowers. Berries are round, blue to almost black. References External links [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Polyphyly
A polyphyletic group is an assemblage of organisms or other evolving elements that is of mixed evolutionary origin. The term is often applied to groups that share similar features known as homoplasies, which are explained as a result of convergent evolution. The arrangement of the members of a polyphyletic group is called a polyphyly .. ource for pronunciation./ref> It is contrasted with monophyly and paraphyly. For example, the biological characteristic of warm-bloodedness evolved separately in the ancestors of mammals and the ancestors of birds; "warm-blooded animals" is therefore a polyphyletic grouping. Other examples of polyphyletic groups are algae, C4 photosynthetic plants, and edentates. Many taxonomists aim to avoid homoplasies in grouping taxa together, with a goal to identify and eliminate groups that are found to be polyphyletic. This is often the stimulus for major revisions of the classification schemes. Researchers concerned more with ecology than with system ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Outgroup (cladistics)
In cladistics or phylogenetics, an outgroup is a more distantly related group of organisms that serves as a reference group when determining the evolutionary relationships of the ingroup, the set of organisms under study, and is distinct from sociological outgroups. The outgroup is used as a point of comparison for the ingroup and specifically allows for the phylogeny to be rooted. Because the polarity (direction) of character change can be determined only on a rooted phylogeny, the choice of outgroup is essential for understanding the evolution of traits along a phylogeny. History Although the concept of outgroups has been in use from the earliest days of cladistics, the term "outgroup" is thought to have been coined in the early 1970s at the American Museum of Natural History. Prior to the advent of the term, various other terms were used by evolutionary biologists, including "exgroup", "related group", and "outside groups". Choice of outgroup The chosen outgroup is hypothes ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Smilax Tsinchengshanensis
''Smilax'' is a genus of about 300–350 species, found in the tropics and subtropics worldwide. In China for example about 80 are found (39 of which are endemic), while there are 20 in North America north of Mexico. They are climbing flowering plants, many of which are woody and/or thorny, in the monocotyledon family Smilacaceae, native throughout the tropical and subtropical regions of the world. Common names include ''catbriers'', ''greenbriers'', ''prickly-ivys'' and ''smilaxes''. ''Sarsaparilla'' (also zarzaparrilla, sarsparilla) is a name used specifically for the Jamaican '' S. ornata'' as well as a catch-all term in particular for American species. Occasionally, the non-woody species such as the smooth herbaceous greenbrier (''S. herbacea'') are separated as genus ''Nemexia''; they are commonly known by the rather ambiguous name ''carrion flowers''. Greenbriers get their scientific name from the Greek myth of Crocus and the nymph Smilax. Though this myth has numerous f ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Heterosmilax Japonica
''Heterosmilax'' was considered a genus of flowering plants in the family Smilacaceae. It was native to southern China and Southeast Asia. Subsequent molecular phylogenetic studies showed that it was embedded within another genus, ''Smilax'' and was reduced to a section Section, Sectioning or Sectioned may refer to: Arts, entertainment and media * Section (music), a complete, but not independent, musical idea * Section (typography), a subdivision, especially of a chapter, in books and documents ** Section sign ... within that genus. ; Species * '' Heterosmilax borneensis'' A.DC. - Cambodia, Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia, Borneo, Sumatra * '' Heterosmilax chinensis'' F.T.Wang - Guangdong, Guangxi, Sichuan, Yunnan * '' Heterosmilax gaudichaudiana'' (Kunth) Maxim - Vietnam, Fujian, Guangdong, Guangxi, Hainan, Taiwan * '' Heterosmilax longiflora'' K.Y.Guan & Noltie - Yunnan * '' Heterosmilax micrandra'' T.Koyama - Hainan * '' Heterosmilax micrantha'' (Blume) Bakh.f. - Java * ' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cladistics
Cladistics (; ) is an approach to biological classification in which organisms are categorized in groups (" clades") based on hypotheses of most recent common ancestry. The evidence for hypothesized relationships is typically shared derived characteristics ( synapomorphies'')'' that are not present in more distant groups and ancestors. However, from an empirical perspective, common ancestors are inferences based on a cladistic hypothesis of relationships of taxa whose character states can be observed. Theoretically, a last common ancestor and all its descendants constitute a (minimal) clade. Importantly, all descendants stay in their overarching ancestral clade. For example, if the terms ''worms'' or ''fishes'' were used within a ''strict'' cladistic framework, these terms would include humans. Many of these terms are normally used paraphyletically, outside of cladistics, e.g. as a 'grade', which are fruitless to precisely delineate, especially when including extinct species. R ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Occam's Razor
Occam's razor, Ockham's razor, or Ocham's razor ( la, novacula Occami), also known as the principle of parsimony or the law of parsimony ( la, lex parsimoniae), is the problem-solving principle that "entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity". It is generally understood in the sense that with competing theories or explanations, the simpler one, for example a model with fewer parameters, is to be preferred. The idea is frequently attributed to English Franciscan friar William of Ockham (), a scholastic philosopher and theologian, although he never used these exact words. This philosophical razor advocates that when presented with competing hypotheses about the same prediction, one should select the solution with the fewest assumptions, and that this is not meant to be a way of choosing between hypotheses that make different predictions. Similarly, in science, Occam's razor is used as an abductive heuristic in the development of theoretical models rather than as a rigoro ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Beringia
Beringia is defined today as the land and maritime area bounded on the west by the Lena River in Russia; on the east by the Mackenzie River in Canada; on the north by 72 degrees north latitude in the Chukchi Sea; and on the south by the tip of the Kamchatka Peninsula. It includes the Chukchi Sea, the Bering Sea, the Bering Strait, the Chukchi and Kamchatka Peninsulas in Russia as well as Alaska in the United States and the Yukon in Canada. The area includes land lying on the North American Plate and Siberian land east of the Chersky Range. At certain times in prehistory, it formed a land bridge that was up to wide at its greatest extent and which covered an area as large as British Columbia and Alberta together, totaling approximately . Today, the only land that is visible from the central part of the Bering land bridge are the Diomede Islands, the Pribilof Islands of St. Paul and St. George, St. Lawrence Island, St. Matthew Island, and King Island. The term ''Beringi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
