Nitrogen
Nitrogen is a chemical element with symbol N and atomic number 7. It was first discovered and isolated by Scottish physician Daniel Rutherford in 1772. Although Carl Wilhelm Scheele and Henry Cavendish had independently done so at about the same time, Rutherford is accorded the credit because his work was published first; the name nitrogène was suggested by French chemist Jean-Antoine-Claude Chaptal in 1790, when it was found that nitrogen was present in nitric acid and nitrates. Antoine Lavoisier suggested instead the name azote, from the Greek ἀζωτικός "no life", as it is an asphyxiant gas. Nitrogen is the lightest member of group 15 of the periodic table called the pnictogens; the name comes from the Greek πνίγειν "to choke", directly referencing nitrogen's asphyxiating properties. It is a common element in the universe, estimated at about seventh in total abundance in the Milky Way and the Solar System. At standard temperature and pressure, two atoms of the element bind to form dinitrogen, a colourless and odorless diatomic gas with the formula N2.
Dinitrogen forms about 78 % of Earth's atmosphere. Nitrogen occurs in all organisms in amino acids, in the nucleic acids and in the energy transfer molecule adenosine triphosphate; the human body contains about 3% nitrogen by mass, the fourth most abundant element in the body after oxygen and hydrogen. The nitrogen cycle describes movement of the element from the air, into the biosphere and organic compounds back into the atmosphere. Many industrially important compounds, such as ammonia, nitric acid, organic nitrates, cyanides, contain nitrogen; the strong triple bond in elemental nitrogen, the second strongest bond in any diatomic molecule after carbon monoxide, dominates nitrogen chemistry. This causes difficulty for both organisms and industry in converting N2 into useful compounds, but at the same time means that burning, exploding, or decomposing nitrogen compounds to form nitrogen gas releases large amounts of useful energy. Synthetically produced ammonia and nitrates are key industrial fertilisers, fertiliser nitrates are key pollutants in the eutrophication of water systems.
Apart from its use in fertilisers and energy-stores, nitrogen is a constituent of organic compounds as diverse as Kevlar used in high-strength fabric and cyanoacrylate used in superglue. Nitrogen is a constituent including antibiotics. Many drugs are mimics or prodrugs of natural nitrogen-containing signal molecules: for example, the organic nitrates nitroglycerin and nitroprusside control blood pressure by metabolizing into nitric oxide. Many notable nitrogen-containing drugs, such as the natural caffeine and morphine or the synthetic amphetamines, act on receptors of animal neurotransmitters. Nitrogen compounds have a long history, ammonium chloride having been known to Herodotus, they were well known by the Middle Ages. Alchemists knew nitric acid as aqua fortis, as well as other nitrogen compounds such as ammonium salts and nitrate salts; the mixture of nitric and hydrochloric acids was known as aqua regia, celebrated for its ability to dissolve gold, the king of metals. The discovery of nitrogen is attributed to the Scottish physician Daniel Rutherford in 1772, who called it noxious air.
Though he did not recognise it as an different chemical substance, he distinguished it from Joseph Black's "fixed air", or carbon dioxide. The fact that there was a component of air that does not support combustion was clear to Rutherford, although he was not aware that it was an element. Nitrogen was studied at about the same time by Carl Wilhelm Scheele, Henry Cavendish, Joseph Priestley, who referred to it as burnt air or phlogisticated air. Nitrogen gas was inert enough that Antoine Lavoisier referred to it as "mephitic air" or azote, from the Greek word άζωτικός, "no life". In an atmosphere of pure nitrogen, animals died and flames were extinguished. Though Lavoisier's name was not accepted in English, since it was pointed out that all gases are mephitic, it is used in many languages and still remains in English in the common names of many nitrogen compounds, such as hydrazine and compounds of the azide ion, it led to the name "pnictogens" for the group headed by nitrogen, from the Greek πνίγειν "to choke".
The English word nitrogen entered the language from the French nitrogène, coined in 1790 by French chemist Jean-Antoine Chaptal, from the French nitre and the French suffix -gène, "producing", from the Greek -γενής. Chaptal's meaning was that nitrogen is the essential part of nitric acid, which in turn was produced from nitre. In earlier times, niter had been confused with Egyptian "natron" – called νίτρον in Greek – which, despite the name, contained no nitrate; the earliest military and agricultural applications of nitrogen compounds used saltpeter, most notably in gunpowder, as fertiliser. In 1910, Lord Rayleigh discovered that an electrical discharge in nitrogen gas produced "active nitrogen", a monatomic allotrope of nitrogen; the "whirling cloud of brilliant yellow light
Siskiyou Mountains
The Siskiyou Mountains are a coastal subrange of the Klamath Mountains, located in northwestern California and southwestern Oregon in the United States. They extend in an arc for 100 miles from east of Crescent City, northeast along the north side of the Klamath River into Josephine and Jackson counties in Oregon; the mountain range forms a barrier between the watersheds of the Klamath River to the south and the Rogue River to the north. These mountains are not the highest of the Klamath Mountains, but due to the relief so close to the Pacific Ocean, the peaks receive more precipitation than the surrounding land; this leads to forests. Diversity abounds because western canyons can receive over 100 inches of rain in some winters while eastern areas are more arid. Since the Siskiyous trend both north to south and east to west, they hold species that range from coastal, like Coast Redwood, to Cascadian, like Alaska Yellow-Cedar and Pacific Silver Fir. Much of the range is within the Rogue River -- Klamath national forests.
The Pacific Crest Trail follows a portion of the ridge of the range. The Klamath-Siskiyou forests are noted for their high biodiversity; the origin of the word siskiyou is not known. One version is that it is the Chinook Jargon word for "bob-tailed horse". According to historian Richard Mackie, "siskiyou" was a Cree word for a bob-tailed horse, one of which perished in 1829 during Alexander McLeod's journey over a pass named for the "siskiyou"; the Cree were in the area as part of McLeod's Hudson's Bay Company expedition, had been recruited far away in their homeland in eastern Canada. Another version, given in an argument before the State Senate in 1852, is that the French name Six Cailloux, meaning "six-stones", was given to a ford on the Umpqua River by Michel Laframboise and a party of Hudson's Bay Company trappers in 1832, because six large stones or rocks lay in the river where they crossed. According to some, the Six Cailloux name was appropriated to this region by Stephen Meek, another Hudson's Bay Company trapper, known for his "discovery" of Scott Valley, in regard to a crossing on the Klamath River near Hornbrook.
Still others attribute the name to a local tribe of Native Americans. Natives speaking the Athapaskan Language lived along the Rogue River prior to 1850; these settlements were winter residences, the people spent much of the summer in the mountains. Most early exploration of the area came from the coast, beginning in 1775, when the Spanish lieutenant Bruno de Heceta came to the Northwest, he would be followed in 1791 and 1792 by other explorers like captain George Vancouver, James Baker, Robert Gray. The early western overland expeditions all avoided the area around the Oregon-California border, so that the first land-based expeditions came when the North West Company came to the area in 1820, followed by the Hudson's Bay Company in 1821; the Siskiyou Trail stretched from California's Central Valley through the Siskiyous to Oregon's Willamette Valley. Based on existing Native American foot trails winding their way through river valleys, the Siskiyou Trail provided the shortest practical travel path between early settlements in California and Oregon in the 1820s.
As settlement increased with a variety of new incentives, tensions over relations with the natives increased. In the 1850s, following the Donation Land Claim Act, miners came to the area to prospect for gold. Thousands of miners flooded into the area as profitable claims were made; the new settlements grew enough for Jackson County to be founded, with its seat in Jacksonville, in 1853. The large and sudden influx of white population deteriorated the relationship with the natives in the area; this led to the 1855 Rogue River Wars, which ended in 1856. The new population needed to be supported by an improved infrastructure. By 1859, the trail had been replaced by a toll road. A telegraph line was built over the summit in 1864. By the end of the 1870s, the first private lumber mills were established in the mountains had been established in some of the lower creeks. Commercial orchards began to be planted in 1885; the Southern Pacific Railroad was completed over Siskiyou Summit in 1887. The new railroads were focused around Medford.
The Klamath Lake Railroad Company built a railroad into Pokegama from 1900 to 1903. It became a vital part of the lumber industry and was acquired by Weyerhaeuser in 1905. Irrigation projects that began at the end of the 19th century led to a boom in the fruit orchard industry. Apple blights around 1900 diminished pears began to be a major crop. By 1910, pears had begun to replace apples as the major fruit grown in the region. In 1927, the Jackson County seat moved to Medford; the highest peaks in the range include Mount Ashland at an elevation of 7,533 feet, Dutchman Peak at 7,410 feet, Siskiyou Peak at 7,147 feet, Wagner Butte at 7,140 feet, all of which are in Oregon. The highest peak in the California portion of the range is Preston Peak at 7,309 feet. There are several lower mountains, including Negro Ben Mountain, which reaches 4,398 feet; the main drainage basins in the mountains are those of the Klamath Rivers. Interstate 5 passes through the Siskiyou Mountains at Siskiyou Summit, located just north of the Oregon-California border, just south of Ashland, Oregon.
Siskiyou Summit is the highest pass on Interstate 5, at 4,310 feet. This pass is one of the most treacherous in the Interstate highway system; the California side has a more gradual slope than the Oregon side, where the freeway climbs or descends 2,300 feet in e
Puget Sound
Puget Sound is a sound along the northwestern coast of the U. S. state of Washington, an inlet of the Pacific Ocean, part of the Salish Sea. It is a complex estuarine system of interconnected marine waterways and basins, with one major and two minor connections to the open Pacific Ocean via the Strait of Juan de Fuca—Admiralty Inlet being the major connection and Deception Pass and Swinomish Channel being the minor. Water flow through Deception Pass is equal to 2% of the total tidal exchange between Puget Sound and the Strait of Juan de Fuca. Puget Sound extends 100 miles from Deception Pass in the north to Olympia, Washington in the south, its average depth is 450 feet and its maximum depth, off Jefferson Point between Indianola and Kingston, is 930 feet. The depth of the main basin, between the southern tip of Whidbey Island and Tacoma, Washington, is 600 feet. In 2009, the term Salish Sea was established by the United States Board on Geographic Names as the collective waters of Puget Sound, the Strait of Juan de Fuca, the Strait of Georgia.
Sometimes the terms "Puget Sound" and "Puget Sound and adjacent waters" are used for not only Puget Sound proper but for waters to the north, such as Bellingham Bay and the San Juan Islands region. The term "Puget Sound" is used not just for the body of water but the Puget Sound region centered on the sound. Major cities on the sound include Seattle, Tacoma and Everett, Washington. Puget Sound is the third largest estuary in the United States, after Chesapeake Bay in Maryland and Virginia, San Francisco Bay in northern California. In 1792 George Vancouver gave the name "Puget's Sound" to the waters south of the Tacoma Narrows, in honor of Peter Puget, a Huguenot lieutenant accompanying him on the Vancouver Expedition; this name came to be used for the waters north of Tacoma Narrows as well. A different term for Puget Sound, used by a number of Native Americans and environmental groups, is Whulge, an anglicization of the Lushootseed name x̌ʷə́lč, which means "sea, salt water, ocean, or sound".
The USGS defines Puget Sound as all the waters south of three entrances from the Strait of Juan de Fuca. The main entrance at Admiralty Inlet is defined as a line between Point Wilson on the Olympic Peninsula, Point Partridge on Whidbey Island; the second entrance is at Deception Pass along a line from West Point on Whidbey Island, to Deception Island to Rosario Head on Fidalgo Island. The third entrance is at the south end of the Swinomish Channel, which connects Skagit Bay and Padilla Bay. Under this definition, Puget Sound includes the waters of Hood Canal, Admiralty Inlet, Possession Sound, Saratoga Passage, others, it does not include Bellingham Bay, Padilla Bay, the waters of the San Juan Islands or anything farther north. Another definition, given by NOAA, subdivides Puget Sound into regions. Four of these correspond to areas within the USGS definition, but the fifth one, called "Northern Puget Sound" includes a large additional region, it is defined as bounded to the north by the international boundary with Canada, to the west by a line running north from the mouth of the Sekiu River on the Olympic Peninsula.
Under this definition significant parts of the Strait of Juan de Fuca and the Strait of Georgia are included in Puget Sound, with the international boundary marking an abrupt and hydrologically arbitrary limit. According to Arthur Kruckeberg, the term "Puget Sound" is sometimes used for waters north of Admiralty Inlet and Deception Pass for areas along the north coast of Washington and the San Juan Islands equivalent to NOAA's "Northern Puget Sound" subdivision described above. Kruckeberg uses the term "Puget Sound and adjacent waters". Continental ice sheets have advanced and retreated from the Puget Sound region; the most recent glacial period, called the Fraser Glaciation, stades. During the third, or Vashon Glaciation, a lobe of the Cordilleran Ice Sheet, called the Puget Lobe, spread south about 15,000 years ago, covering the Puget Sound region with an ice sheet about 3,000 feet thick near Seattle, nearly 6,000 feet at the present Canada-U. S. border. Since each new advance and retreat of ice erodes away much of the evidence of previous ice ages, the most recent Vashon phase has left the clearest imprint on the land.
At its maximum extent the Vashon ice sheet extended south of Olympia to near Tenino, covered the lowlands between the Olympic and Cascade mountain ranges. About 14,000 years ago the ice began to retreat. By 11,000 years ago it survived only north of the Canada–US border; the melting retreat of the Vashon Glaciation eroded the land, creating a drumlin field of hundreds of aligned drumlin hills. Lake Washington and Lake Sammamish, Hood Canal, the main Puget Sound basin were altered by glacial forces; these glacial forces are not "carving", as in cutting into the landscape via the mechanics of ice/glaciers, but rather eroding the landscape from melt water of the Vashon Glacier creating the drumlin field. As the ice retreated, vast amounts of glacial till were deposited throughout the Puget Sound region; the soils of the region, less than ten thousand years old, are still characterized as immature. As the Vashon glacier receded a series of proglacial lakes formed, filling the main trough of Puget Sound and inundating the southern lowlands.
Glacial Lake Russell was the first such large recessional lake. From the vicinity of Seattle in the north the lake extended south to the Black Hills, where it drained south into the Chehalis River. Sediments from Lake Russell form the blue-gray clay identified as the Lawton Clay; the second
Arbutus unedo
Arbutus unedo, the strawberry tree, is an evergreen shrub or small tree in the family Ericaceae, native to the Mediterranean region and western Europe north to western France and Ireland. Due to its presence in southwest and northwest Ireland, it is known as either "Irish strawberry tree", or cain or cane apple, or sometimes Killarney strawberry tree. Despite the name, it is not the source of the common strawberry, obtained from Fragaria × ananassa, an unrelated plant. Arbutus unedo was one of the many species described by Carl Linnaeus in Volume One of his landmark 1753 work Species Plantarum, giving it the name it still bears today. A study published in 2001 which analyzed ribosomal DNA from Arbutus and related genera found Arbutus to be paraphyletic, A. unedo to be related to the other Mediterranean Basin species such as A. andrachne and A. canariensis and not to the western North American members of the genus. Arbutus unedo and A. andrachne hybridise where their ranges overlap. It is sold in California as Arbutus x Marina named for a district in San Francisco where it was hybridized.
Arbutus unedo grows to 5–10 m tall up to 15 m, with a trunk diameter of up to 80 cm. It grows in hardiness zones 7–10; the leaves are glossy, 5 -- 10 cm long and 2 -- 3 cm broad, with a serrated margin. The hermaphrodite flowers are white, bell-shaped, 4–6 mm diameter, produced panicles of 10–30 together in autumn, they are pollinated by bees, have a mild sweet scent. The fruit is 1 -- 2 cm diameter, with a rough surface, it matures in about 12 months, in autumn, at the same time as the next flowering. It is edible. Seeds are dispersed by frugivorous birdsThe name unedo is attributed to Pliny the Elder, who claimed that "unum tantum edo", meaning "I eat only one", it is not known whether he meant that the fruit was so good he could eat only one, or whether he meant that the fruit was uninteresting so he ate only one. Arbutus unedo is widespread in the Mediterranean region: in Portugal and southeastern France, it is found in western France, Albania and southwestern Ireland. Its disjunct distribution, with an isolated relict population in southwestern and northwestern Ireland, notably in Killarney and around Lough Gill in County Sligo, its most northerly stand in the world, is a remnant of former broader distribution during the milder climate of the Atlantic period, the warmest and moistest Blytt-Sernander period, when the climate was warmer than today.
The red-flowered variant, named A. unedo rubra by William Aiton in 1785, was discovered growing wild in Ireland in 1835. Arbutus unedo is quite an easy plant to cultivate, is adaptable to many climates. Once established it is drought resistant, frost resistant, shade tolerant and salt tolerant. Lower production of fruit mass has however been reported in case of summer droughts, frosts in flowering time was seen to decrease the numbers of fruits. Arbutus unedo is adapted to dry summer climates, has become a popular ornamental plant in California and the rest of the west coast of North America, it can grow in USDA hardiness zone 7 or warmer. It grows well in the cool, wet summers of western Ireland and England, temperate regions of Europe and Asia. Pests include scales and thrips, diseases include anthracnose, root rot, rust. Unlike most of the Ericaceae, A. unedo grows well in basic pH soils though it does better in more acidic soils. The fruit production is not high and is variable on the weather, that may be part of the reason this plant is not much cultivated.
The average yield in a two years study is around 46 kg per hectare, 180 grams per cubic metre of crown. However little work has so far been done in terms of genotype selection. Arbutus unedo has been seen to form a mycorrhizal relationship. Inoculation with Pisolithus tinctorius has shown to improve the plants root mass, tolerance to drought and nutritional status. In cultivation in the UK, the form A. unedo f. rubra and the cultivar ‘Atlantic’ have gained the Royal Horticultural Society’s Award of Garden Merit Propagation can be done via seed, layering, or cutting. The seed should undergo a one month cold stratification period soaked for 5 to 6 days in warm water to improve germination success. Seedlings are prone to damp, should be cared in the first year. Germination rate is low over 20%. Layering can take up to two years, but has a good success rate, while cutting is done with a 15–20 cm long mature wood, preferably with a heel in November to December; the success rate however is not high. Arbutus unedo's fruits have a high content of sugars, antioxidant vitamins such as vitamin C, beta-carotene, niacin and organic acids that are precursors to omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids.
They are edible fresh, but, an uncommon consumption because the mature fruit tends to bruise easily, making transportation difficult. They are used for jam, marmalades and alcoholic beverages, such as the Portuguese medronho, a type of strong brandy. Many regions of Albania prepare the traditional drink rakia from the fruits of the p
Bird
Birds known as Aves, are a group of endothermic vertebrates, characterised by feathers, toothless beaked jaws, the laying of hard-shelled eggs, a high metabolic rate, a four-chambered heart, a strong yet lightweight skeleton. Birds range in size from the 5 cm bee hummingbird to the 2.75 m ostrich. They rank as the world's most numerically-successful class of tetrapods, with ten thousand living species, more than half of these being passerines, sometimes known as perching birds. Birds have wings which are less developed depending on the species. Wings, which evolved from forelimbs, gave birds the ability to fly, although further evolution has led to the loss of flight in flightless birds, including ratites and diverse endemic island species of birds; the digestive and respiratory systems of birds are uniquely adapted for flight. Some bird species of aquatic environments seabirds and some waterbirds, have further evolved for swimming; the fossil record demonstrates that birds are modern feathered dinosaurs, having evolved from earlier feathered dinosaurs within the theropod group, which are traditionally placed within the saurischian dinosaurs.
The closest living relatives of birds are the crocodilians. Primitive bird-like dinosaurs that lie outside class Aves proper, in the broader group Avialae, have been found dating back to the mid-Jurassic period, around 170 million years ago. Many of these early "stem-birds", such as Archaeopteryx, were not yet capable of powered flight, many retained primitive characteristics like toothy jaws in place of beaks, long bony tails. DNA-based evidence finds that birds diversified around the time of the Cretaceous–Palaeogene extinction event 66 million years ago, which killed off the pterosaurs and all the non-avian dinosaur lineages, but birds those in the southern continents, survived this event and migrated to other parts of the world while diversifying during periods of global cooling. This makes them the sole surviving dinosaurs according to cladistics; some birds corvids and parrots, are among the most intelligent animals. Many species annually migrate great distances. Birds are social, communicating with visual signals and bird songs, participating in such social behaviours as cooperative breeding and hunting and mobbing of predators.
The vast majority of bird species are monogamous for one breeding season at a time, sometimes for years, but for life. Other species have breeding systems that are polygynous or polyandrous. Birds produce offspring by laying eggs, they are laid in a nest and incubated by the parents. Most birds have an extended period of parental care after hatching; some birds, such as hens, lay eggs when not fertilised, though unfertilised eggs do not produce offspring. Many species of birds are economically important as food for human consumption and raw material in manufacturing, with domesticated and undomesticated birds being important sources of eggs and feathers. Songbirds and other species are popular as pets. Guano is harvested for use as a fertiliser. Birds prominently figure throughout human culture. About 120–130 species have become extinct due to human activity since the 17th century, hundreds more before then. Human activity threatens about 1,200 bird species with extinction, though efforts are underway to protect them.
Recreational birdwatching is an important part of the ecotourism industry. The first classification of birds was developed by Francis Willughby and John Ray in their 1676 volume Ornithologiae. Carl Linnaeus modified that work in 1758 to devise the taxonomic classification system in use. Birds are categorised as the biological class Aves in Linnaean taxonomy. Phylogenetic taxonomy places Aves in the dinosaur clade Theropoda. Aves and a sister group, the clade Crocodilia, contain the only living representatives of the reptile clade Archosauria. During the late 1990s, Aves was most defined phylogenetically as all descendants of the most recent common ancestor of modern birds and Archaeopteryx lithographica. However, an earlier definition proposed by Jacques Gauthier gained wide currency in the 21st century, is used by many scientists including adherents of the Phylocode system. Gauthier defined Aves to include only the crown group of the set of modern birds; this was done by excluding most groups known only from fossils, assigning them, instead, to the Avialae, in part to avoid the uncertainties about the placement of Archaeopteryx in relation to animals traditionally thought of as theropod dinosaurs.
Gauthier identified four different definitions for the same biological name "Aves", a problem. Gauthier proposed to reserve the term Aves only for the crown group consisting of the last common ancestor of all living birds and all of its descendants, which corresponds to meaning number 4 below, he assigned other names to the other groups. Aves can mean all archosaurs closer to birds than to crocodiles Aves can mean those advanced archosaurs with feathers Aves can mean those feathered dinosaurs that fly Aves can mean the last common ancestor of all the living birds and all of its descendants (a "c
Bud
In botany, a bud is an undeveloped or embryonic shoot and occurs in the axil of a leaf or at the tip of a stem. Once formed, a bud may remain for some time in a dormant condition, or it may form a shoot immediately. Buds may be specialized to develop flowers or short shoots, or may have the potential for general shoot development; the term bud is used in zoology, where it refers to an outgrowth from the body which can develop into a new individual. The buds of many woody plants in temperate or cold climates, are protected by a covering of modified leaves called scales which enclose the more delicate parts of the bud. Many bud scales are covered by a gummy substance; when the bud develops, the scales may enlarge somewhat but just drop off, leaving a series of horizontally-elongated scars on the surface of the growing stem. By means of these scars one can determine the age of any young branch, since each year's growth ends in the formation of a bud, the formation of which produces an additional group of bud scale scars.
Continued growth of the branch causes these scars to be obliterated after a few years so that the total age of older branches cannot be determined by this means. In many plants scales do not form over the bud, the bud is called a naked bud; the minute underdeveloped leaves in such buds are excessively hairy. Naked buds are found in some shrubs, like some species of the Sumac and Viburnums and in herbaceous plants. In many of the latter, buds are more reduced consisting of undifferentiated masses of cells in the axils of leaves. A terminal bud occurs on the end of a stem and lateral buds are found on the side. A head of cabbage is an exceptionally large terminal bud, while Brussels sprouts are large lateral buds. Since buds are formed in the axils of leaves, their distribution on the stem is the same as that of leaves. There are alternate and whorled buds, as well as the terminal bud at the tip of the stem. In many plants buds appear in unexpected places: these are known as adventitious buds, it is possible to find a bud in a remarkable series of gradations of bud scales.
In the buckeye, for example, one may see a complete gradation from the small brown outer scale through larger scales which on unfolding become somewhat green to the inner scales of the bud, which are remarkably leaf-like. Such a series suggests that the scales of the bud are in truth leaves, modified to protect the more delicate parts of the plant during unfavorable periods. Buds are useful in the identification of plants for woody plants in winter when leaves have fallen. Buds may be classified and described according to different criteria: location, status and function. Botanists use the following terms: for location: terminal, when located at the tip of a stem; the term is usable as a synonym of resting, but is better employed for buds waiting undeveloped for years, for example epicormic buds. Buds The term bud is used by analogy within zoology as well, where it refers to an outgrowth from the body which develops into a new individual, it is a form of asexual reproduction limited to animals or plants of simple structure.
In this process a portion of the wall of the parent cell pushes out. The protuberance thus formed enlarges while at this time the nucleus of the parent cell divides. One of the resulting nuclei passes into the bud, the bud is cut off from its parent cell and the process is repeated; the daughter cell will begin to bud before it becomes separated from the parent, so that whole colonies of adhering cells may be formed. Cross walls cut off the bud from the original cell
California
California is a state in the Pacific Region of the United States. With 39.6 million residents, California is the most populous U. S. the third-largest by area. The state capital is Sacramento; the Greater Los Angeles Area and the San Francisco Bay Area are the nation's second and fifth most populous urban regions, with 18.7 million and 9.7 million residents respectively. Los Angeles is California's most populous city, the country's second most populous, after New York City. California has the nation's most populous county, Los Angeles County, its largest county by area, San Bernardino County; the City and County of San Francisco is both the country's second-most densely populated major city after New York City and the fifth-most densely populated county, behind only four of the five New York City boroughs. California's $3.0 trillion economy is larger than that of any other state, larger than those of Texas and Florida combined, the largest sub-national economy in the world. If it were a country, California would be the 5th largest economy in the world, the 36th most populous as of 2017.
The Greater Los Angeles Area and the San Francisco Bay Area are the nation's second- and third-largest urban economies, after the New York metropolitan area. The San Francisco Bay Area PSA had the nation's highest GDP per capita in 2017 among large PSAs, is home to three of the world's ten largest companies by market capitalization and four of the world's ten richest people. California is considered a global trendsetter in popular culture, innovation and politics, it is considered the origin of the American film industry, the hippie counterculture, fast food, the Internet, the personal computer, among others. The San Francisco Bay Area and the Greater Los Angeles Area are seen as global centers of the technology and entertainment industries, respectively. California has a diverse economy: 58% of the state's economy is centered on finance, real estate services and professional, scientific and technical business services. Although it accounts for only 1.5% of the state's economy, California's agriculture industry has the highest output of any U.
S. state. California is bordered by Oregon to the north and Arizona to the east, the Mexican state of Baja California to the south; the state's diverse geography ranges from the Pacific Coast in the west to the Sierra Nevada mountain range in the east, from the redwood–Douglas fir forests in the northwest to the Mojave Desert in the southeast. The Central Valley, a major agricultural area, dominates the state's center. Although California is well-known for its warm Mediterranean climate, the large size of the state results in climates that vary from moist temperate rainforest in the north to arid desert in the interior, as well as snowy alpine in the mountains. Over time and wildfires have become more pervasive features. What is now California was first settled by various Native Californian tribes before being explored by a number of European expeditions during the 16th and 17th centuries; the Spanish Empire claimed it as part of Alta California in their New Spain colony. The area became a part of Mexico in 1821 following its successful war for independence but was ceded to the United States in 1848 after the Mexican–American War.
The western portion of Alta California was organized and admitted as the 31st state on September 9, 1850. The California Gold Rush starting in 1848 led to dramatic social and demographic changes, with large-scale emigration from the east and abroad with an accompanying economic boom; the word California referred to the Baja California Peninsula of Mexico. The name derived from the mythical island California in the fictional story of Queen Calafia, as recorded in a 1510 work The Adventures of Esplandián by Garci Rodríguez de Montalvo; this work was the fifth in a popular Spanish chivalric romance series that began with Amadis de Gaula. Queen Calafia's kingdom was said to be a remote land rich in gold and pearls, inhabited by beautiful black women who wore gold armor and lived like Amazons, as well as griffins and other strange beasts. In the fictional paradise, the ruler Queen Calafia fought alongside Muslims and her name may have been chosen to echo the title of a Muslim leader, the Caliph. It's possible.
Know ye that at the right hand of the Indies there is an island called California close to that part of the Terrestrial Paradise, inhabited by black women without a single man among them, they lived in the manner of Amazons. They were robust of body with great virtue; the island itself is one of the wildest in the world on account of the craggy rocks. Shortened forms of the state's name include CA, Cal. Calif. and US-CA. Settled by successive waves of arrivals during the last 10,000 years, California was one of the most culturally and linguistically diverse areas in pre-Columbian North America. Various estimates of the native population range from 100,000 to 300,000; the Indigenous peoples of California included more than 70 distinct groups of Native Americans, ranging from large, settled populations living on the coast to groups in the interior. California groups were diverse in their political organization with bands, villages, on the resource-rich coasts, large chiefdoms, such as the Chumash and Salinan.
Trade, intermarriage a
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