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Juniperus
Junipers are coniferous trees and shrubs in the genus ''Juniperus'' ( ) of the cypress family Cupressaceae. Depending on the taxonomy, between 50 and 67 species of junipers are widely distributed throughout the Northern Hemisphere as far south as tropical Africa, including the Arctic, parts of Asia, and Central America. The highest-known juniper forest occurs at an altitude of in southeastern Tibet and the northern Himalayas, creating one of the highest tree lines on earth. Description Junipers vary in size and shape from tall trees, tall, to columnar or low-spreading shrubs with long, trailing branches. They are evergreen with needle-like and/or scale-like leaves. They can be either monoecious or dioecious. The female seed cones are very distinctive, with fleshy, fruit-like coalescing scales which fuse together to form a berrylike structure ( galbulus), long, with one to 12 unwinged, hard-shelled seeds. In some species, these "berries" are red-brown or orange, but ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Juniperus Communis
''Juniperus communis'', the common juniper, is a species of small tree or shrub in the cypress family Cupressaceae. An evergreen conifer, it has the largest geographical range of any woody plant, with a circumpolar distribution throughout the cool temperate Northern Hemisphere. Description ''Juniperus communis'' is highly variable in form, ranging from —rarely —tall to a low, often prostrate spreading shrub in exposed locations. It has needle-like leaves in whorls of three; the leaves are green, with a single white stomatal band on the inner surface. It never attains the scale-like adult foliage of other members of the genus. It is dioecious, with male and female cones on separate plants so requiring wind pollination to transfer pollen from male to female cones. Male trees or shrubs naturally live longer than female trees or shrubs; a male tree or shrub can live more than 2000 years.Lena K. Ward, The Conservation of Juniper: Longevity and Old Age, Journal of Applied Ecology, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Juniperus Osteosperma
''Juniperus osteosperma'' (Utah juniper; syn. ''J. utahensis'') is a shrub or small tree native to the southwestern United States. Description The plant reaches , rarely to 9 m, tall. The shoots are fairly thick compared to most junipers, in diameter. The leaves are arranged in opposite decussate pairs or whorls of three; the adult leaves are scale-like, 1–2 mm long (to 5 mm on lead shoots) and 1–1.5 mm broad. The juvenile leaves (on young seedlings only) are needle-like, long. The cones are berry-like, in diameter, blue-brown with a whitish waxy bloom, and contain a single seed (rarely two); they mature in about 18 months and are eaten by birds and small mammals. The male cones are 2–4 mm long, and shed their pollen in early spring. It is mostly monoecious with both sexes on the same plant, but around 10% of plants are dioecious, producing cones of only one sex. The plants frequently bear numerous galls caused by the juniper tip midge '' Oligo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Juniper Berry
A juniper berry is the female seed cone produced by the various species of junipers. It is not a true berry but a cone with unusually fleshy and merged scales called a galbulus, which gives it a berry-like appearance. The cones from a handful of species, especially ''Juniperus communis'', are used as a spice, particularly in European cuisine, and also give gin its distinctive flavour. Juniper berries are among the only spices derived from conifers, along with spruce buds. Description Unlike the separated and woody scales of a typical pine cone, those in a juniper berry remain fleshy and merge into a unified covering surrounding the seeds. Juniper berries are sometimes regarded as arils, like the berry-like cones of Taxaceae, yews. ''Juniperus communis'' berries vary from to in diameter; other species are mostly similar in size, though some are larger, notably ''Juniperus drupacea, J. drupacea'' (). The berries are green when young and mature to purple-black over about 18 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cupressaceae
Cupressaceae or the cypress family is a family of conifers. The family includes 27–30 genera (17 monotypic), which include the junipers and redwoods, with about 130–140 species in total. They are monoecious, subdioecious or (rarely) dioecious trees and shrubs up to tall. The bark of mature trees is commonly orange- to red-brown and of stringy texture, often flaking or peeling in vertical strips, but smooth, scaly or hard and square-cracked in some species. The family reached its peak of diversity during the Mesozoic era. Description The leaves are arranged either spirally, in decussate pairs (opposite pairs, each pair at 90° to the previous pair) or in decussate whorls of three or four, depending on the genus. On young plants, the leaves are needle-like, becoming small and scale-like on mature plants of many genera; some genera and species retain needle-like leaves throughout their lives. Old leaves are mostly not shed individually, but in small sprays of foliage ( clad ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Conifer Cone
A conifer cone, or in formal botanical usage a strobilus, : strobili, is a seed-bearing organ on gymnosperm plants, especially in conifers and cycads. They are usually woody and variously conic, cylindrical, ovoid, to globular, and have scales and bracts arranged around a central axis, but can be fleshy and berry-like. The cone of Pinophyta (conifer clade) contains the reproductive structures. The woody cone is the female cone, which produces seeds. The male cone, which produces pollen, is usually ephemeral and much less conspicuous even at full maturity. The name "cone" derives from Greek ''konos'' (pine cone), which also gave name to the geometric cone. The individual plates of a cone are known as ''scales''. In conifers where the cone develops over more than one year (such as pines), the first year's growth of a seed scale on the cone, showing up as a protuberance at the end of the two-year-old scale, is called an ''umbo'', while the second year's growth is called th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Species Distribution
Species distribution, or species dispersion, is the manner in which a biological taxon is spatially arranged. The geographic limits of a particular taxon's distribution is its range, often represented as shaded areas on a map. Patterns of distribution change depending on the scale at which they are viewed, from the arrangement of individuals within a small family unit, to patterns within a population, or the distribution of the entire species as a whole (range). Species distribution is not to be confused with biological dispersal, dispersal, which is the movement of individuals away from their center of origin, region of origin or from a population center of high population density, density. Range In biology, the range of a species is the geographical area within which that species can be found. Within that range, distribution is the general structure of the species population, while dispersion is the variation in its population density. Range is often described with the foll ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Shrub
A shrub or bush is a small to medium-sized perennial woody plant. Unlike herbaceous plants, shrubs have persistent woody stems above the ground. Shrubs can be either deciduous or evergreen. They are distinguished from trees by their multiple Plant stem, stems and shorter height, less than tall. Small shrubs, less than tall are sometimes termed as subshrubs. Many botany, botanical groups have species that are shrubs, and others that are trees and herbaceous plants instead. Some define a shrub as less than and a tree as over 6 m. Others use as the cutoff point for classification. Many trees do not reach this mature height because of hostile, less than ideal growing conditions, and resemble shrub-sized plants. Others in such species have the potential to grow taller in ideal conditions. For longevity, most shrubs are classified between Perennial plant, perennials and trees. Some only last about five years in good conditions. Others, usually larger and more woody, live beyond ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Conifer
Conifers () are a group of conifer cone, cone-bearing Spermatophyte, seed plants, a subset of gymnosperms. Scientifically, they make up the phylum, division Pinophyta (), also known as Coniferophyta () or Coniferae. The division contains a single extant class (biology), class, Pinopsida. All Neontology, extant conifers are perennial plant, perennial woody plants with secondary growth. The majority are trees, though a few are shrubs. Examples include Cedrus, cedars, Pseudotsuga, Douglas-firs, Cupressaceae, cypresses, firs, junipers, Agathis, kauri, larches, pines, Tsuga, hemlocks, Sequoioideae, redwoods, spruces, and Taxaceae, yews.Campbell, Reece, "Phylum Coniferophyta". ''Biology''. 7th ed. 2005. Print. p. 595. As of 2002, Pinophyta contained seven families, 60 to 65 genera, and more than 600 living species. Although the total number of species is relatively small, conifers are ecology, ecologically important. They are the dominant plants over large areas of land, most notably ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Himalayas
The Himalayas, or Himalaya ( ), is a mountain range in Asia, separating the plains of the Indian subcontinent from the Tibetan Plateau. The range has some of the Earth's highest peaks, including the highest, Mount Everest. More than list of highest mountains on Earth, 100 peaks exceeding elevations of above sea level lie in the Himalayas. The Himalayas abut on or cross territories of Himalayan states, six countries: Nepal, China, Pakistan, Bhutan, India and Afghanistan. The sovereignty of the range in the Kashmir region is disputed among India, Pakistan, and China. The Himalayan range is bordered on the northwest by the Karakoram and Hindu Kush ranges, on the north by the Tibetan Plateau, and on the south by the Indo-Gangetic Plain. Some of the world's major rivers, the Indus River, Indus, the Ganges river, Ganges, and the Yarlung Tsangpo River, Tsangpo–Brahmaputra River, Brahmaputra, rise in the vicinity of the Himalayas, and their combined drainage basin is home to some 6 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Seed
In botany, a seed is a plant structure containing an embryo and stored nutrients in a protective coat called a ''testa''. More generally, the term "seed" means anything that can be Sowing, sown, which may include seed and husk or tuber. Seeds are the product of the ripened ovule, after the embryo sac is fertilization, fertilized by Pollen, sperm from pollen, forming a zygote. The embryo within a seed develops from the zygote and grows within the mother plant to a certain size before growth is halted. The formation of the seed is the defining part of the process of reproduction in seed plants (spermatophytes). Other plants such as ferns, mosses and marchantiophyta, liverworts, do not have seeds and use water-dependent means to propagate themselves. Seed plants now dominate biological Ecological niche, niches on land, from forests to grasslands both in hot and cold climates. In the flowering plants, the ovary ripens into a fruit which contains the seed and serves to disseminate ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Galbulus
A galbulus is a fleshy cone ( megastrobilus); chiefly relating to those borne by junipers and cypresses, and often mistakenly called a berry. These cones (galbuli) are formed by fleshy cone scales which accrete into a single mass under a unified epidermis. Although originally used for the cypresses, the term is more applicable to the junipers. See also * Aril An aril (), also called arillus, is a specialized outgrowth from a seed that partly or completely covers the seed. An arillode, or false aril, is sometimes distinguished: whereas an aril grows from the attachment point of the seed to the ova ..., fleshy modified cone-scales also found in some species of gymnosperms References Plant morphology {{plant-morphology-stub ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
