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Cassytha
''Cassytha'' is a genus of some two dozen species of obligately parasitic vines in the family Lauraceae. Superficially, and in some aspects of their ecology, they closely resemble plants in the unrelated genus ''Cuscuta'', the dodders.Weber, J. Z. A TAXONOMIC REVISION OF CASSYTHA (LAURACEAE) IN AUSTRALIA. J. Adelaide Bot. Gard. 3(3): 187-262(1981JSTOR/ref> When fruit and flowers are absent in the field, the physical resemblance is so close that few people without technical training can discern the difference. In this respect and in their ecology the two genera present a spectacular example of convergent evolution.Nickrent, D. L. 2002. Phylogenetic Origins of Parasitic Plants. Chapter 3, pp. 29-56 In J. A. López-Sáez, P. Catalán and L. Sáez ds. Parasitic Plants of the Iberian Peninsula and Balearic Islands. Mundi-Prensa, Madrid. Nonetheless, Nickrent comments that "''Cassytha'' is uneqivocally assigned to Lauraceae based on (both) morphological and molecular data." ...
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Cassytha Ciliolata Fruit Flower Buds Haustoria IMG 3889s
''Cassytha'' is a genus of some two dozen species of obligately parasitic vines in the family Lauraceae. Superficially, and in some aspects of their ecology, they closely resemble plants in the unrelated genus ''Cuscuta'', the dodders.Weber, J. Z. A TAXONOMIC REVISION OF CASSYTHA (LAURACEAE) IN AUSTRALIA. J. Adelaide Bot. Gard. 3(3): 187-262(1981JSTOR/ref> When fruit and flowers are absent in the field, the physical resemblance is so close that few people without technical training can discern the difference. In this respect and in their ecology the two genera present a spectacular example of convergent evolution.Nickrent, D. L. 2002. Phylogenetic Origins of Parasitic Plants. Chapter 3, pp. 29-56 In J. A. López-Sáez, P. Catalán and L. Sáez ds. Parasitic Plants of the Iberian Peninsula and Balearic Islands. Mundi-Prensa, Madrid. Nonetheless, Nickrent comments that "''Cassytha'' is uneqivocally assigned to Lauraceae based on (both) morphological and molecular data." I ...
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Cassytha Filiformis (6016714856)
''Cassytha filiformis'' or love-vine is an orangish, wiry, parasitic plant, parasitic vine in the laurel family (Lauraceae), found in warm tropical regions worldwide in the Americas, Africa, Asia, Australia, and the Pacific. It is an obligate parasite, meaning it cannot complete its life-cycle without another host plant. Research in Florida (in southeast United States) has found that love-vine inhibits Gall wasp, gall wasps by attacking the Gall, galls (small growths on plants) that the wasps create for their young. The plant is one of many considered an aphrodisiac in the Caribbean, lending the name "love-vine." Distribution The species has a native pantropical distribution encompassing the Americas, Indomalaya, Australasia, Polynesia and tropical Africa. Description ''Cassytha filiformis'' is a twining vine with an orange to pale green stem. Leaves are reduced to scales about 1 mm long. Flowers are borne in Spike (botany), spikes or sometimes solitary. There are six tepal ...
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Cassytha Filiformis
''Cassytha filiformis'' or love-vine is an orangish, wiry, parasitic vine in the laurel family (Lauraceae), found in warm tropical regions worldwide in the Americas, Africa, Asia, Australia, and the Pacific. It is an obligate parasite, meaning it cannot complete its life-cycle without another host plant. Research in Florida (in southeast United States) has found that love-vine inhibits gall wasps by attacking the galls (small growths on plants) that the wasps create for their young. The plant is one of many considered an aphrodisiac in the Caribbean, lending the name "love-vine." Distribution The species has a native pantropical distribution encompassing the Americas, Indomalaya, Australasia, Polynesia and tropical Africa. Description ''Cassytha filiformis'' is a twining vine with an orange to pale green stem. Leaves are reduced to scales about 1 mm long. Flowers are borne in spikes or sometimes solitary. There are six tepals, each 0.1-2.0 mm long. Fruit is a drupe ab ...
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Lauraceae
Lauraceae, or the laurels, is a plant family that includes the true laurel and its closest relatives. This family comprises about 2850 known species in about 45 genera worldwide (Christenhusz & Byng 2016 ). They are dicotyledons, and occur mainly in warm temperate and tropical regions, especially Southeast Asia and South America. Many are aromatic evergreen trees or shrubs, but some, such as '' Sassafras'', are deciduous, or include both deciduous and evergreen trees and shrubs, especially in tropical and temperate climates. The genus '' Cassytha'' is unique in the Lauraceae in that its members are parasitic vines. Most laurels are highly-poisonous. Overview The family has a worldwide distribution in tropical and warm climates. The Lauraceae are important components of tropical forests ranging from low-lying to montane. In several forested regions, Lauraceae are among the top five families in terms of the number of species present. The Lauraceae give their name to habitats ...
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Cuscuta
''Cuscuta'' (), commonly known as dodder or amarbel, is a genus of over 201 species of yellow, orange, or red (rarely green) parasitic plants. Formerly treated as the only genus in the family Cuscutaceae, it now is accepted as belonging in the morning glory family, Convolvulaceae, on the basis of the work of the Angiosperm Phylogeny Group. The genus is found throughout the temperate and tropical regions of the world, with the greatest species diversity in subtropical and tropical regions; the genus becomes rare in cool temperate climates, with only four species native to northern Europe. Folk names include: strangle tare, scaldweed, beggarweed, lady's laces, fireweed, wizard's net, devil's guts, devil's hair, devil's ringlet, goldthread, hailweed, hairweed, hellbine, love vine, pull-down, strangleweed, angel hair, and witch's hair. Description Cuscuta can be identified by its thin stems appearing leafless, with the leaves reduced to minute scales. In these respects it closely r ...
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Raceme
A raceme ( or ) or racemoid is an unbranched, indeterminate type of inflorescence bearing flowers having short floral stalks along the shoots that bear the flowers. The oldest flowers grow close to the base and new flowers are produced as the shoot grows in height, with no predetermined growth limit. Examples of racemes occur on mustard (genus '' Brassica'') and radish (genus '' Raphanus'') plants. Definition A ''raceme'' or ''racemoid'' is an unbranched, indeterminate type of inflorescence bearing pedicellate flowers (flowers having short floral stalks called ''pedicels'') along its axis. In botany, an ''axis'' means a shoot, in this case one bearing the flowers. In indeterminate inflorescence-like racemes, the oldest flowers grow close to the base and new flowers are produced as the shoot grows in height, with no predetermined growth limit. A plant that flowers on a showy raceme may have this reflected in its scientific name, e.g. the species ''Cimicifuga racemosa''. A comp ...
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Pseudanthium
A pseudanthium (Greek for "false flower"; ) is an inflorescence that resembles a flower. The word is sometimes used for other structures that are neither a true flower nor a true inflorescence. Examples of pseudanthia include flower heads, composite flowers, or capitula, which are special types of inflorescences in which anything from a small cluster to hundreds or sometimes thousands of flowers are grouped together to form a single flower-like structure. Pseudanthia take various forms. The real flowers (the florets) are generally small and often greatly reduced, but the pseudanthium itself can sometimes be quite large (as in the heads of some varieties of sunflower). Pseudanthia are characteristic of the daisy and sunflower family (Asteraceae), whose flowers are differentiated into ray flowers and disk flowers, unique to this family. The disk flowers in the center of the pseudanthium are actinomorphic and the corolla is fused into a tube. Flowers on the periphery are zygomor ...
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Haustorium
In botany and mycology, a haustorium (plural haustoria) is a rootlike structure that grows into or around another structure to absorb water or nutrients. For example, in mistletoe or members of the broomrape family, the structure penetrates the host's tissue and draws nutrients from it. In mycology, it refers to the appendage or portion of a parasitic fungus (the hyphal tip), which performs a similar function. Microscopic haustoria penetrate the host plant's cell wall and siphon nutrients from the space between the cell wall and plasma membrane but do not penetrate the membrane itself. Larger (usually botanical, not fungal) haustoria do this at the tissue level. The etymology of the name corresponds to the Latin word '' haustor'' meaning ''the one who draws, drains or drinks'', and refers to the action performed by the outgrowth. In fungi Fungi in all major divisions form haustoria. Haustoria take several forms. Generally, on penetration, the fungus increases the surface ar ...
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Australasian Realm
The Australasian realm is a biogeographic realm that is coincident with, but not (by some definitions) the same as, the geographical region of Australasia. The realm includes Australia, the island of New Guinea (comprising Papua New Guinea and the Indonesian province of Papua), and the eastern part of the Indonesian archipelago, including the island of Sulawesi, the Moluccan islands (the Indonesian provinces of Maluku and North Maluku), and the islands of Lombok, Sumbawa, Sumba, Flores, and Timor, often known as the Lesser Sundas. The Australasian realm also includes several Pacific island groups, including the Bismarck Archipelago, Vanuatu, the Solomon Islands, and New Caledonia. New Zealand and its surrounding islands are a distinctive sub-region of the Australasian realm. The rest of Indonesia is part of the Indomalayan realm. In the classification scheme developed by Miklos Udvardy, New Guinea, New Caledonia, Solomon Islands and New Zealand are placed in the Oceanian r ...
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Chlorophyll
Chlorophyll (also chlorophyl) is any of several related green pigments found in cyanobacteria and in the chloroplasts of algae and plants. Its name is derived from the Greek words , ("pale green") and , ("leaf"). Chlorophyll allow plants to absorb energy from light. Chlorophylls absorb light most strongly in the blue portion of the electromagnetic spectrum as well as the red portion. Conversely, it is a poor absorber of green and near-green portions of the spectrum. Hence chlorophyll-containing tissues appear green because green light, diffusively reflected by structures like cell walls, is less absorbed. Two types of chlorophyll exist in the photosystems of green plants: chlorophyll ''a'' and ''b''. History Chlorophyll was first isolated and named by Joseph Bienaimé Caventou and Pierre Joseph Pelletier in 1817. The presence of magnesium in chlorophyll was discovered in 1906, and was that element's first detection in living tissue. After initial work done by German ch ...
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Obligate Parasite
An obligate parasite or holoparasite is a parasitic organism that cannot complete its life-cycle without exploiting a suitable host. If an obligate parasite cannot obtain a host it will fail to reproduce. This is opposed to a facultative parasite, which can act as a parasite but does not rely on its host to continue its life-cycle. Obligate parasites have evolved a variety of parasitic strategies to exploit their hosts. Holoparasites and some hemiparasites are obligate. It is advantageous for the parasite to preserve the health of their host when this is compatible with their nutritional and reproductive requirements, except when the death of the host is necessary for transmission.Combes, C. (1997) Fitness of Parasites: Pathology and Selection ''International Journal for Parasitology'' 27 (1): 1–10. Species Obligate parasitism is exhibited in a range of organisms, with examples in viruses, bacteria, fungi, plants, and animals.Balashov, Yu.S. (2011) Parasitism and Ecological ...
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Herbaceous Plant
Herbaceous plants are vascular plants that have no persistent wood, woody stems above ground. This broad category of plants includes many perennial plant, perennials, and nearly all Annual plant, annuals and Biennial plant, biennials. Definitions of "herb" and "herbaceous" The fourth edition of the ''Shorter Oxford English Dictionary'' defines "herb" as: #"A plant whose stem does not become woody and persistent (as in a tree or shrub) but remains soft and succulent, and dies (completely or down to the root) after flowering"; #"A (freq. aromatic) plant used for flavouring or scent, in medicine, etc.". (See: Herb) The same dictionary defines "herbaceous" as: #"Of the nature of a herb; esp. not forming a woody stem but dying down to the root each year"; #"BOTANY Resembling a leaf in colour or texture. Opp. Glossary of botanical terms#scarious, scarious". Botanical sources differ from each other on the definition of "herb". For instance, the Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentatio ...
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