1.
Garigal National Park
–
The Garigal National Park is a protected national park that is located in the North Shore region of Sydney, New South Wales, in eastern Australia. The 2, 202-hectare national park is situated approximately 20 kilometres north of the Sydney central business district. The park trails are popular with bushwalkers and mountain bike riders, others trails include the Heath Track and Bare Creek Track. The word Garigal is a derivation of the word Carigal or Caregal used to describe the people who lived in Guringai country. Much of the park is bounded by residential development along the tops and it is easily accessible at numerous points by road. In the south–eastern sector – Surrounding Bantry Bay between Killarney Heights and Forestville to the west, and Wakehurst Parkway and the Manly Dam Reserve to the east. Garigal National Park is home to a range of fauna, including birds, snakes. There is also a number of introduced pests, including rabbits, protected areas of New South Wales Garigal National Park. NSW National Parks & Wildlife Service, NSW National Parks & Wildlife Service, Government of New South Wales. Garigal National Park, Plan of management, NSW National Parks & Wildlife Service. Detailed track notes and maps of most of the walks in Garigal National Park, the Northern Beaches Mountain Biking Group
2.
Australia
–
Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania and numerous smaller islands. It is the worlds sixth-largest country by total area, the neighbouring countries are Papua New Guinea, Indonesia and East Timor to the north, the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu to the north-east, and New Zealand to the south-east. Australias capital is Canberra, and its largest urban area is Sydney, for about 50,000 years before the first British settlement in the late 18th century, Australia was inhabited by indigenous Australians, who spoke languages classifiable into roughly 250 groups. The population grew steadily in subsequent decades, and by the 1850s most of the continent had been explored, on 1 January 1901, the six colonies federated, forming the Commonwealth of Australia. Australia has since maintained a liberal democratic political system that functions as a federal parliamentary constitutional monarchy comprising six states. The population of 24 million is highly urbanised and heavily concentrated on the eastern seaboard, Australia has the worlds 13th-largest economy and ninth-highest per capita income. With the second-highest human development index globally, the country highly in quality of life, health, education, economic freedom. The name Australia is derived from the Latin Terra Australis a name used for putative lands in the southern hemisphere since ancient times, the Dutch adjectival form Australische was used in a Dutch book in Batavia in 1638, to refer to the newly discovered lands to the south. On 12 December 1817, Macquarie recommended to the Colonial Office that it be formally adopted, in 1824, the Admiralty agreed that the continent should be known officially as Australia. The first official published use of the term Australia came with the 1830 publication of The Australia Directory and these first inhabitants may have been ancestors of modern Indigenous Australians. The Torres Strait Islanders, ethnically Melanesian, were originally horticulturists, the northern coasts and waters of Australia were visited sporadically by fishermen from Maritime Southeast Asia. The first recorded European sighting of the Australian mainland, and the first recorded European landfall on the Australian continent, are attributed to the Dutch. The first ship and crew to chart the Australian coast and meet with Aboriginal people was the Duyfken captained by Dutch navigator, Willem Janszoon. He sighted the coast of Cape York Peninsula in early 1606, the Dutch charted the whole of the western and northern coastlines and named the island continent New Holland during the 17th century, but made no attempt at settlement. William Dampier, an English explorer and privateer, landed on the north-west coast of New Holland in 1688, in 1770, James Cook sailed along and mapped the east coast, which he named New South Wales and claimed for Great Britain. The first settlement led to the foundation of Sydney, and the exploration, a British settlement was established in Van Diemens Land, now known as Tasmania, in 1803, and it became a separate colony in 1825. The United Kingdom formally claimed the part of Western Australia in 1828. Separate colonies were carved from parts of New South Wales, South Australia in 1836, Victoria in 1851, the Northern Territory was founded in 1911 when it was excised from South Australia
3.
Taxonomy (biology)
–
Taxonomy is the science of defining groups of biological organisms on the basis of shared characteristics and giving names to those groups. The exact definition of taxonomy varies from source to source, but the core of the remains, the conception, naming. There is some disagreement as to whether biological nomenclature is considered a part of taxonomy, the broadest meaning of taxonomy is used here. The word taxonomy was introduced in 1813 by Candolle, in his Théorie élémentaire de la botanique, the term alpha taxonomy is primarily used today to refer to the discipline of finding, describing, and naming taxa, particularly species. In earlier literature, the term had a different meaning, referring to morphological taxonomy, ideals can, it may be said, never be completely realized. They have, however, a value of acting as permanent stimulants. Some of us please ourselves by thinking we are now groping in a beta taxonomy, turrill thus explicitly excludes from alpha taxonomy various areas of study that he includes within taxonomy as a whole, such as ecology, physiology, genetics, and cytology. He further excludes phylogenetic reconstruction from alpha taxonomy, thus, Ernst Mayr in 1968 defined beta taxonomy as the classification of ranks higher than species. This activity is what the term denotes, it is also referred to as beta taxonomy. How species should be defined in a group of organisms gives rise to practical and theoretical problems that are referred to as the species problem. The scientific work of deciding how to define species has been called microtaxonomy, by extension, macrotaxonomy is the study of groups at higher taxonomic ranks, from subgenus and above only, than species. While some descriptions of taxonomic history attempt to date taxonomy to ancient civilizations, earlier works were primarily descriptive, and focused on plants that were useful in agriculture or medicine. There are a number of stages in scientific thinking. Early taxonomy was based on criteria, the so-called artificial systems. Later came systems based on a complete consideration of the characteristics of taxa, referred to as natural systems, such as those of de Jussieu, de Candolle and Bentham. The publication of Charles Darwins Origin of Species led to new ways of thinking about classification based on evolutionary relationships and this was the concept of phyletic systems, from 1883 onwards. This approach was typified by those of Eichler and Engler, the advent of molecular genetics and statistical methodology allowed the creation of the modern era of phylogenetic systems based on cladistics, rather than morphology alone. Taxonomy has been called the worlds oldest profession, and naming and classifying our surroundings has likely been taking place as long as mankind has been able to communicate
4.
Plant
–
Plants are mainly multicellular, predominantly photosynthetic eukaryotes of the kingdom Plantae. The term is generally limited to the green plants, which form an unranked clade Viridiplantae. This includes the plants, conifers and other gymnosperms, ferns, clubmosses, hornworts, liverworts, mosses and the green algae. Green plants have cell walls containing cellulose and obtain most of their energy from sunlight via photosynthesis by primary chloroplasts and their chloroplasts contain chlorophylls a and b, which gives them their green color. Some plants are parasitic and have lost the ability to produce amounts of chlorophyll or to photosynthesize. Plants are characterized by sexual reproduction and alternation of generations, although reproduction is also common. There are about 300–315 thousand species of plants, of which the great majority, green plants provide most of the worlds molecular oxygen and are the basis of most of Earths ecologies, especially on land. Plants that produce grains, fruits and vegetables form humankinds basic foodstuffs, Plants play many roles in culture. They are used as ornaments and, until recently and in variety, they have served as the source of most medicines. The scientific study of plants is known as botany, a branch of biology, Plants are one of the two groups into which all living things were traditionally divided, the other is animals. The division goes back at least as far as Aristotle, who distinguished between plants, which generally do not move, and animals, which often are mobile to catch their food. Much later, when Linnaeus created the basis of the system of scientific classification. Since then, it has become clear that the plant kingdom as originally defined included several unrelated groups, however, these organisms are still often considered plants, particularly in popular contexts. When the name Plantae or plant is applied to a group of organisms or taxon. The evolutionary history of plants is not yet settled. Those which have been called plants are in bold, the way in which the groups of green algae are combined and named varies considerably between authors. Algae comprise several different groups of organisms which produce energy through photosynthesis, most conspicuous among the algae are the seaweeds, multicellular algae that may roughly resemble land plants, but are classified among the brown, red and green algae. Each of these groups also includes various microscopic and single-celled organisms
5.
Flowering plant
–
The flowering plants, also known as Angiospermae or Magnoliophyta, are the most diverse group of land plants, with 416 families, approx. 13,164 known genera and a total of c.295,383 known species, etymologically, angiosperm means a plant that produces seeds within an enclosure, in other words, a fruiting plant. The term angiosperm comes from the Greek composite word meaning enclosed seeds, the ancestors of flowering plants diverged from gymnosperms in the Triassic Period, during the range 245 to 202 million years ago, and the first flowering plants are known from 160 mya. They diversified extensively during the Lower Cretaceous, became widespread by 120 mya, angiosperms differ from other seed plants in several ways, described in the table. These distinguishing characteristics taken together have made the angiosperms the most diverse and numerous land plants, the amount and complexity of tissue-formation in flowering plants exceeds that of gymnosperms. The vascular bundles of the stem are arranged such that the xylem and phloem form concentric rings, in the dicotyledons, the bundles in the very young stem are arranged in an open ring, separating a central pith from an outer cortex. In each bundle, separating the xylem and phloem, is a layer of meristem or active formative tissue known as cambium, the soft phloem becomes crushed, but the hard wood persists and forms the bulk of the stem and branches of the woody perennial. Among the monocotyledons, the bundles are more numerous in the stem and are scattered through the ground tissue. They contain no cambium and once formed the stem increases in diameter only in exceptional cases, the characteristic feature of angiosperms is the flower. Flowers show remarkable variation in form and elaboration, and provide the most trustworthy external characteristics for establishing relationships among angiosperm species, the function of the flower is to ensure fertilization of the ovule and development of fruit containing seeds. The floral apparatus may arise terminally on a shoot or from the axil of a leaf, occasionally, as in violets, a flower arises singly in the axil of an ordinary foliage-leaf. There are two kinds of cells produced by flowers. Microspores, which divide to become pollen grains, are the male cells and are borne in the stamens. The female cells called megaspores, which divide to become the egg cell, are contained in the ovule. The flower may consist only of parts, as in willow. Usually, other structures are present and serve to protect the sporophylls, the individual members of these surrounding structures are known as sepals and petals. The outer series is usually green and leaf-like, and functions to protect the rest of the flower, the inner series is, in general, white or brightly colored, and is more delicate in structure. It functions to attract insect or bird pollinators, attraction is effected by color, scent, and nectar, which may be secreted in some part of the flower
6.
Eudicots
–
The eudicots, Eudicotidae or eudicotyledons are a monophyletic clade of flowering plants that had been called tricolpates or non-magnoliid dicots by previous authors. The close relationships among flowering plants with tricolpate pollen grains was initially seen in studies of shared derived characters. These plants have a trait in their pollen grains of exhibiting three colpi or grooves paralleling the polar axis. Later molecular evidence confirmed the basis for the evolutionary relationships among flowering plants with tricolpate pollen grains. The term means true dicotyledons, as it contains the majority of plants that have been considered dicots and have characteristics of the dicots, the term eudicots has subsequently been widely adopted in botany to refer to one of the two largest clades of angiosperms, monocots being the other. The remaining angiosperms are sometimes referred to as basal angiosperms or paleodicots, the other name for the eudicots is tricolpates, a name which refers to the grooved structure of the pollen. Members of the group have tricolpate pollen, or forms derived from it and these pollens have three or more pores set in furrows called colpi. In contrast, most of the seed plants produce monosulcate pollen. The name tricolpates is preferred by some botanists to avoid confusion with the dicots, numerous familiar plants are eudicots, including many common food plants, trees, and ornamentals. Most leafy trees of midlatitudes also belong to eudicots, with exceptions being magnolias and tulip trees which belong to magnoliids, and Ginkgo biloba. The name eudicots is used in the APG system, of 1998 and it is applied to a clade, a monophyletic group, which includes most of the dicots. The eudicots can be divided into two groups, the basal eudicots and the core eudicots, basal eudicot is an informal name for a paraphyletic group. The core eudicots are a monophyletic group, a 2010 study suggested the core eudicots can be divided into two clades, Gunnerales and a clade called Pentapetalae, comprising all the remaining core eudicots
7.
Rosids
–
The rosids are members of a large clade of flowering plants, containing about 70,000 species, more than a quarter of all angiosperms. The clade is divided into 16 to 20 orders, depending upon circumscription and classification and these orders, in turn, together comprise about 140 families. Fossil rosids are known from the Cretaceous period, molecular clock estimates indicate that the rosids originated in the Aptian or Albian stages of the Cretaceous, between 125 and 99.6 million years ago. The name is based upon the name Rosidae, which had usually been understood to be a subclass, in 1967, Armen Takhtajan showed that the correct basis for the name Rosidae is a description of a group of plants published in 1830 by Friedrich Gottlieb Bartling. The clade was later renamed Rosidae and has been variously delimited by different authors, the name rosids is informal and not assumed to have any particular taxonomic rank like the names authorized by the ICBN. The rosids are monophyletic based upon evidence found by molecular phylogenetic analysis, three different definitions of the rosids were used. Some authors included the orders Saxifragales and Vitales in the rosids, others excluded both of these orders. The circumscription used in this article is that of the APG IV classification, which includes Vitales, the rosids and Saxifragales form the superrosids clade. This is one of three groups compose the Pentapetalae, the others being Dilleniales and the superasterids. The rosids consist of two groups, the order Vitales and the eurosids, the eurosids, in turn, are divided into two groups, fabids and malvids. The rosids consist of 17 orders, in addition to Vitales, there are 8 orders in fabids and 8 orders in malvids. Some of the orders have only recently been recognized and these are Vitales, Zygophyllales, Crossosomatales, Picramniales, and Huerteales. The phylogeny of Rosids shown below is adapted from the Angiosperm Phylogeny Group website, the nitrogen-fixing clade contains a high number of actinorhizal plants. Not all plants in this clade are actinorhizal, however, media related to Rosids at Wikimedia Commons
8.
Myrtales
–
The Myrtales are an order of flowering plants placed as a sister to the eurosids II clade as of the publishing of the Eucalyptus grandis genome in June 2014. The APG III system of classification for angiosperms still places it within the eurosids, the following families are included as of APG III, Alzateaceae S. A. Graham Combretaceae R. Br. The Cronquist system gives essentially the composition, except the Vochysiaceae are removed to the order Polygalales. The families Sonneratiaceae, Trapaceae, and Punicaceae are removed from the Lythraceae, in the classification system of Dahlgren the Myrtales were in the superorder Myrtiflorae. The APG III system agrees with the older Cronquist circumscriptions of treating Psiloxylaceae and Heteropyxidaceae within Myrtaceae, ellagitannins are reported in dicotyledoneous angiospermes, and notably in species in the order Myrtales. Myrtales is dated to have begun 89-99 million years ago in Australasia, there is some contention as to that date however, which was obtained using nuclear DNA. When looking at chloroplast DNA, the ancestor is instead considered to have evolved in the mid-cretaceous period in Southeast Africa. Although the APG system classifies myrtales as within the eurosids, the published genome of Eucalyptus grandis places the order myrtales as a sister to the eurosids rather than inside them. The discrepancy is thought to have due to the difference between using a large number of taxa versus using a large number of genes for constructing a phylogeny. Conti, E. Erikkson, T. Schonenberger, J. Sytsma, K. J. Baum, early Tertiary Out-of-India Dispersal of Crypteroniaceae, Evidence from Phylogeny and Molecular Dating. Schönenberger, J. Conti, E. Molecular phylogeny and floral evolution of Penaeaceae, Oliniaceae, Rhynchocalycaceae, and Alzateaceae
9.
Myrtaceae
–
Myrtaceae is the myrtle family, a family of dicotyledonous plants placed within the order Myrtales. Myrtle, pohutukawa, the bay rum tree, clove, guava, acca, allspice, all species are woody, with essential oils, and flower parts in multiples of four or five. One notable character of the family is that the phloem is located on both sides of the xylem, not just outside as in most other plants, the leaves are evergreen, alternate to mostly opposite, simple, and usually with an entire margin. The flowers have a number of five petals, though in several genera the petals are minute or absent. The stamens are usually conspicuous, brightly coloured and numerous. Recent estimates suggest the Myrtaceae include approximately 5950 species in ca 132 genera, the family has a wide distribution in tropical and warm-temperate regions of the world, and are typically common in many of the worlds biodiversity hotspots. Genera with capsular fruits such as Eucalyptus, Corymbia, Angophora, Leptospermum, genera with fleshy fruits have their greatest concentrations in eastern Australia and Malesia and the Neotropics. Eucalyptus is a dominant, nearly ubiquitous genus in the more parts of Australia. Eucalyptus regnans is the tallest flowering plant in the world, other important Australian genera are Callistemon, Syzygium, and Melaleuca. Species of the genus Osbornia, native to Australasia, are mangroves, eugenia, Myrcia, and Calyptranthes are among the larger genera in the neotropics. Historically, the Myrtaceae were divided into two subfamilies, subfamily Myrtoideae was recognized as having fleshy fruits and opposite, entire leaves. Most genera in this subfamily have one of three recognized types of embryos. The genera of Myrtoideae can be difficult to distinguish in the absence of mature fruits. Myrtoideae are found worldwide in subtropical and tropical regions, with centers of diversity in the Neotropics, northeastern Australia, in contrast, subfamily Leptospermoideae was recognized as having dry, dehiscent fruits and leaves arranged spirally or alternate. The Leptospermoideae are found mostly in Australasia, with a centre of diversity in Australia, many genera in Western Australia have greatly reduced leaves and flowers typical of more xeric habitats. Thus, many workers are now using a recent analysis by Wilson et al. as a point to test further analyses of the family. The genera Heteropyxis and Psiloxylon have been separated as separate families by many authors in the past as Heteropyxidaceae and Psiloxylaceae, however, Wilson et al. included them in Myrtaceae. These two genera are believed to be the earliest arising and surviving lineages of Myrtaceae
10.
Angophora
–
Angophora is a genus of flowering plants in the myrtle family, Myrtaceae, described as a genus in 1797. It is endemic to Australia, where species are distributed in Queensland, New South Wales, the centre of diversity is along the northern and central coast of New South Wales. Angophora is closely related to Corymbia and Eucalyptus, and all three genera are often referred to as eucalypts, collectively the eucalypts, or gum trees, dominate many Australian ecosystems. Angophora can be distinguished from other eucalypts by its oppositely arranged leaves and flowers which lack opercula, taxonomists have long recognised the relationships between the eucalypt taxa, but have not agreed upon a classification scheme. Some have proposed merging Angophora and Corymbia into genus Eucalyptus as subgenera, some authors maintain Angophora as a genus, while others continue to debate the issue. Among the eucalypts, Angophora species were nicknamed apples by European settlers, many are still known commonly as apples today. The opposite leaves are hairy and glandular when new, and mostly hairless when mature, the inflorescence is an arrangement of several clusters of 3 to 7 flowers each. The flower has 4 or 5 small, green sepals, overlapping white petals, the fruit is a papery or slightly woody capsule, usually with thick ribs and a coat of hairs. The following are accepted species, Angophora bakeri, a tree up to 10 metres tall. A tree up to 30 meters tall with smooth, scaly bark, - NSW Angophora × clelandii - hybrid A. bakeri × A. hispida - NSW Angophora crassifolia, a tree up to 15 meters tall endemic to New South Wales. - NSW Angophora × dichromophloia - hybrid, A. costata × A. hispida - NSW Angophora euryphylla, - NSW Angophora exul, a threatened species known only from a small area at Gibraltar Rock, New South Wales. A tree up to 8 meters tall with compound, terminal inflorescences, a common tree up to 30 metres tall - NSW, Qld, and Vic Angophora hispida. A tree or mallee up to 7 meters tall, - NSW Angophora inopina, a vulnerable species. A tree up to 8 metres tall, - NSW Angophora leiocarpa, a tree up to 25 meters tall. A multi-stemmed tree up to 15 metres tall, - NSW, Qld Angophora paludosa, a tree up to 15 metres tall. - NSW Angophora robur, a vulnerable species, a tree up to 10 metres tall. A tree up to 20 metres tall, - NSW, Qld Angophora woodsiana, a tree up to 20 metres tall. Centre for Australian National Biodiversity Research, Australian National Herbarium
