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Plant Morphology
Phytomorphology is the study of the physical form and external structure of plants.Raven, P. H., R. F. Evert, & S. E. Eichhorn. ''Biology of Plants'', 7th ed., page 9. (New York: W. H. Freeman, 2005). . This is usually considered distinct from plant anatomy, which is the study of the internal structure of plants, especially at the microscopic level. Plant morphology is useful in the visual identification of plants. Recent studies in molecular biology started to investigate the molecular processes involved in determining the conservation and diversification of plant morphologies. In these studies transcriptome conservation patterns were found to mark crucial ontogenetic transitions during the plant life cycle which may result in evolutionary constraints limiting diversification. Scope Plant morphology "represents a study of the development, form, and structure of plants, and, by implication, an attempt to interpret these on the basis of similarity of plan and origin". There ar ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Angelica Gigas
''Angelica gigas'', also called Korean angelica, giant angelica, purple parsnip, and dangquai, is a monocarpic biennial or short lived perennial plant from Korea and China. It inhabits forests, grasslands and banks of streams. The roots are used in traditional Chinese medicine. Description ''Angelica gigas'' is a stout plant that is 1 to 2 meters high with deep thick roots and a purplish, ribbed stem. It has deeply dissected, very big, broad, pointy leaves. The plant is a biennial plant, biennial that flowers in the months of July to August in dark purple umbels and selfseeds abundantly when the seeds have ripened. Cultivation Giant angelica prefers moist soil and full sun or semishade. The plant is best propagated through seeds in the spring or through transplantation of selfseeded seedlings. Chemical components Research in 2007 has isolated a chemical from the root of the plant, a coumarin derivative (chemistry), derivative called decursin, that may have anti-androgenic prope ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ultrastructure
Ultrastructure (or ultra-structure) is the architecture of cells and biomaterials that is visible at higher magnifications than found on a standard optical light microscope. This traditionally meant the resolution and magnification range of a conventional transmission electron microscope (TEM) when viewing biological specimens such as cells, tissue, or organs. Ultrastructure can also be viewed with scanning electron microscopy and super-resolution microscopy, although TEM is a standard histology technique for viewing ultrastructure. Such cellular structures as organelles, which allow the cell to function properly within its specified environment, can be examined at the ultrastructural level. Ultrastructure, along with molecular phylogeny, is a reliable phylogenetic way of classifying organisms. Features of ultrastructure are used industrially to control material properties and promote biocompatibility. History In 1931, German engineers Max Knoll and Ernst Ruska invente ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Angiosperm
Flowering plants are plants that bear flowers and fruits, and form the clade Angiospermae (). The term angiosperm is derived from the Greek words (; 'container, vessel') and (; 'seed'), meaning that the seeds are enclosed within a fruit. The group was formerly called Magnoliophyta. Angiosperms are by far the most diverse group of land plants with 64 orders, 416 families, approximately 13,000 known genera and 300,000 known species. They include all forbs (flowering plants without a woody stem), grasses and grass-like plants, a vast majority of broad-leaved trees, shrubs and vines, and most aquatic plants. Angiosperms are distinguished from the other major seed plant clade, the gymnosperms, by having flowers, xylem consisting of vessel elements instead of tracheids, endosperm within their seeds, and fruits that completely envelop the seeds. The ancestors of flowering plants diverged from the common ancestor of all living gymnosperms before the end of the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Eudicot
The eudicots or eudicotyledons are flowering plants that have two seed leaves (cotyledons) upon germination. The term derives from ''dicotyledon'' (etymologically, ''eu'' = true; ''di'' = two; ''cotyledon'' = seed leaf). Historically, authors have used the terms tricolpates or non-magnoliid dicots. The current botanical terms were introduced in 1991, by evolutionary botanist James A. Doyle and paleobotanist Carol L. Hotton, to emphasize the later evolutionary divergence of tricolpate dicots from earlier, less specialized, dicots. Scores of familiar plants are eudicots, including many commonly cultivated and edible plants, numerous trees, tropicals and ornamentals. Among the most well-known eudicot genera are those of the sunflower (''Helianthus''), dandelion (''Taraxacum''), forget-me-not ('' Myosotis''), cabbage ('' Brassica''), apple (''Malus''), buttercup ('' Ranunculus''), maple ('' Acer'') and macadamia (''Macadamia''). Most leafy, mid-latitude trees are also classi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Euphorbia
''Euphorbia'' is a large and diverse genus of flowering plants, commonly called spurge, in the family (biology), family Euphorbiaceae. Euphorbias range from tiny annual plants to large and long-lived trees, with perhaps the tallest being ''Euphorbia ampliphylla'' at or more. The genus has roughly 2,000 members, making it one of the List of the largest genera of flowering plants, largest genera of flowering plants. It also has one of the largest ranges of ploidy, chromosome counts, along with ''Rumex'' and ''Senecio''. ''Euphorbia antiquorum'' is the type species for the genus ''Euphorbia''. It was first described by Carl Linnaeus in 1753 in ''Species Plantarum''. Some euphorbias are widely available commercially, such as poinsettias at Christmas. Some are commonly cultivated as ornamentals, or collected and highly valued for the aesthetic appearance of their unique floral structures, such as the crown of thorns plant (''Euphorbia milii''). Succulent plant, Succulent euphorbi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Asparagus Setaceus
''Asparagus setaceus'', with the common names of common asparagus fern, asparagus grass, lace fern, climbing asparagus, or ferny asparagus, is a plant in the family ''Asparagaceae'' native to southern Africa. Despite its common name, the plant is not a true fern, but has leaves that resemble one. Naming Originally described by the German botanist Carl Sigismund Kunth, its Latin specific epithet ''setaceus'' means "hairy". Description ''Asparagus setaceus'' is a scrambling evergreen perennial with tough green stems and leaves, which may reach several metres in length. The leaves are actually leaf-like cladodes up to 7 mm long by 0.1 mm in diameter, which arise in clumps of up to 15 from the stem, making a fine, soft green fern-like foliage. Sharp barbed thorns occur on the stem. Occurring from spring to autumn, the small greenish-white bell-shaped flowers are 0.4 cm long, and are followed by small green berries, which blacken with maturity. They are reportedly ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bryopsis Plumosa
''Bryopsis plumosa'', sometimes known by the common names green algae or hen pen, is a type of green seaweed. Taxonomy This species was originally described by William Hudson under the name ''Ulva plumosa''. Distribution ''Bryopsis plumosa'' is found in the British Isles, Europe, the Mediterranean Sea and the Black Sea, Azores, Portugal, Spain, France, Norway, Faroes and Iceland, on the Atlantic coast of North America, west coast of Greenland, Jamaica, Canary Islands, Senegal, Ghana, Mauritania, South Africa, British Columbia to California, Australia, Japan and New Zealand. Description ''Bryopsis plumosa'' has distichous branches with a thallus that is small and erect, growing up to 10 cm long. It is coloured bright green and has a soft, silky texture. The branches arranged in two opposite rows. Reproduction The species is dioecious Dioecy ( ; ; adj. dioecious, ) is a characteristic of certain species that have distinct unisexual individuals, each producing either m ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Phylogenetics
In biology, phylogenetics () is the study of the evolutionary history of life using observable characteristics of organisms (or genes), which is known as phylogenetic inference. It infers the relationship among organisms based on empirical data and observed heritable traits of DNA sequences, protein amino acid sequences, and morphology. The results are a phylogenetic tree—a diagram depicting the hypothetical relationships among the organisms, reflecting their inferred evolutionary history. The tips of a phylogenetic tree represent the observed entities, which can be living taxa or fossils. A phylogenetic diagram can be rooted or unrooted. A rooted tree diagram indicates the hypothetical common ancestor of the taxa represented on the tree. An unrooted tree diagram (a network) makes no assumption about directionality of character state transformation, and does not show the origin or "root" of the taxa in question. In addition to their use for inferring phylogenetic pa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Convergent Evolution
Convergent evolution is the independent evolution of similar features in species of different periods or epochs in time. Convergent evolution creates analogous structures that have similar form or function but were not present in the last common ancestor of those groups. The cladistic term for the same phenomenon is Cladogram#Homoplasies, homoplasy. The recurrent evolution of flight is a classic example, as flying pterygota, insects, birds, pterosaurs, and bats have independently evolved the useful capacity of flight. Functionally similar features that have arisen through convergent evolution are ''analogous'', whereas ''homology (biology), homologous'' structures or traits have a common origin but can have dissimilar functions. Bird, bat, and pterosaur wings are analogous structures, but their forelimbs are homologous, sharing an ancestral state despite serving different functions. The opposite of convergence is divergent evolution, where related species evolve different trai ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Homology (biology)
In biology, homology is similarity in anatomical structures or genes between organisms of different taxa due to shared ancestry, ''regardless'' of current functional differences. Evolutionary biology explains homologous structures as retained heredity from a common descent, common ancestor after having been subjected to adaptation (biology), adaptive modifications for different purposes as the result of natural selection. The term was first applied to biology in a non-evolutionary context by the anatomist Richard Owen in 1843. Homology was later explained by Charles Darwin's theory of evolution in 1859, but had been observed before this from Aristotle's biology onwards, and it was explicitly analysed by Pierre Belon in 1555. A common example of homologous structures is the forelimbs of vertebrates, where the bat wing development, wings of bats and origin of avian flight, birds, the arms of primates, the front flipper (anatomy), flippers of whales, and the forelegs of quadrupedalis ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ecology
Ecology () is the natural science of the relationships among living organisms and their Natural environment, environment. Ecology considers organisms at the individual, population, community (ecology), community, ecosystem, and biosphere levels. Ecology overlaps with the closely related sciences of biogeography, evolutionary biology, genetics, ethology, and natural history. Ecology is a branch of biology, and is the study of abundance (ecology), abundance, biomass (ecology), biomass, and distribution of organisms in the context of the environment. It encompasses life processes, interactions, and adaptations; movement of materials and energy through living communities; ecological succession, successional development of ecosystems; cooperation, competition, and predation within and between species; and patterns of biodiversity and its effect on ecosystem processes. Ecology has practical applications in fields such as conservation biology, wetland management, natural resource m ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Plant Physiology
Plant physiology is a subdiscipline of botany concerned with the functioning, or physiology, of plants. Plant physiologists study fundamental processes of plants, such as photosynthesis, respiration, plant nutrition, plant hormone functions, tropisms, nastic movements, photoperiodism, photomorphogenesis, circadian rhythms, environmental stress physiology, seed germination, dormancy and stomata function and transpiration. Plant physiology interacts with the fields of plant morphology (structure of plants), plant ecology (interactions with the environment), phytochemistry (biochemistry of plants), cell biology, genetics, biophysics and molecular biology. Aims The field of plant physiology includes the study of all the internal activities of plants—those chemical and physical processes associated with life as they occur in plants. This includes study at many levels of scale of size and time. At the smallest scale are molecular interactions of photosynthesis and internal ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
