1.
Falcataria moluccana
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Falcataria moluccana, commonly known as the Moluccan albizia, is a species of fast-growing tree in the legume family, Fabaceae. It is native to New Guinea, Maluku Islands, the Solomon Islands, and the Bismarck Archipelago in Papua New Guinea and this tree is considered to be invasive in Hawaii, American Samoa and several other island nations in the Pacific and Indian Oceans. It is about 30m tall tree in nature with a massive trunk, Falcataria moluccana is cultivated throughout the wet tropical and subtropical regions of the world and so has many common names. These include, albizia, Moluccan albizia, sengon, batai, sau, leaves - twice pinnately compound with small leaflets Flowers - creamy white small flowers are faintly fragrant Fruits - pods Uses - soft wood is used for make match sticks of match boxes. The tree has become invasive in forests in Hawaii and on other Pacific islands, in Borneo the following moth species have been identified as feeding on Falcataria moluccana. Both of these gall rust species cause damage throughout all stages of the trees growth. Two Actinomycetales bacteria Streptomyces asiaticus and S. cangkringensis have been isolated from the soil surrounding F. moluccana in Indonesia. Although at least 10 species of Streptomyces are plant pathogens it is unclear if two species have any negative impacts on the roots or other tissues of this tree. Media related to Falcataria at Wikimedia Commons Data related to Falcataria moluccana at Wikispecies
2.
Carl Linnaeus
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Carl Linnaeus, also known after his ennoblement as Carl von Linné, was a Swedish botanist, physician, and zoologist, who formalised the modern system of naming organisms called binomial nomenclature. He is known by the father of modern taxonomy. Many of his writings were in Latin, and his name is rendered in Latin as Carolus Linnæus, Linnaeus was born in the countryside of Småland, in southern Sweden. He received most of his education at Uppsala University. He lived abroad between 1735 and 1738, where he studied and also published a first edition of his Systema Naturae in the Netherlands and he then returned to Sweden, where he became professor of medicine and botany at Uppsala. In the 1740s, he was sent on journeys through Sweden to find and classify plants. In the 1750s and 1760s, he continued to collect and classify animals, plants, and minerals, at the time of his death, he was one of the most acclaimed scientists in Europe. The philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau sent him the message, Tell him I know no man on earth. The German writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe wrote, With the exception of Shakespeare and Spinoza, Swedish author August Strindberg wrote, Linnaeus was in reality a poet who happened to become a naturalist. Among other compliments, Linnaeus has been called Princeps botanicorum, The Pliny of the North and he is also considered as one of the founders of modern ecology. In botany, the abbreviation used to indicate Linnaeus as the authority for species names is L. In older publications, sometimes the abbreviation Linn. is found, Linnæus was born in the village of Råshult in Småland, Sweden, on 23 May 1707. He was the first child of Nicolaus Ingemarsson and Christina Brodersonia and his siblings were Anna Maria Linnæa, Sofia Juliana Linnæa, Samuel Linnæus, and Emerentia Linnæa. One of a line of peasants and priests, Nils was an amateur botanist, a Lutheran minister. Christina was the daughter of the rector of Stenbrohult, Samuel Brodersonius, a year after Linnæus birth, his grandfather Samuel Brodersonius died, and his father Nils became the rector of Stenbrohult. The family moved into the rectory from the curates house, even in his early years, Linnæus seemed to have a liking for plants, flowers in particular. Whenever he was upset, he was given a flower, which calmed him. Nils spent much time in his garden and often showed flowers to Linnaeus, soon Linnæus was given his own patch of earth where he could grow plants
3.
Taxonomy (biology)
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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.
Botany
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Botany, also called plant science, plant biology or phytology, is the science of plant life and a branch of biology. A botanist or plant scientist is a scientist who specialises in this field, the term botany comes from the Ancient Greek word βοτάνη meaning pasture, grass, or fodder, βοτάνη is in turn derived from βόσκειν, to feed or to graze. Nowadays, botanists study approximately 410,000 species of plants of which some 391,000 species are vascular plants. Medieval physic gardens, often attached to monasteries, contained plants of medical importance and they were forerunners of the first botanical gardens attached to universities, founded from the 1540s onwards. One of the earliest was the Padua botanical garden and these gardens facilitated the academic study of plants. Efforts to catalogue and describe their collections were the beginnings of plant taxonomy, in the last two decades of the 20th century, botanists exploited the techniques of molecular genetic analysis, including genomics and proteomics and DNA sequences to classify plants more accurately. Modern botany is a broad, multidisciplinary subject with inputs from most other areas of science, dominant themes in 21st century plant science are molecular genetics and epigenetics, which are the mechanisms and control of gene expression during differentiation of plant cells and tissues. Botany originated as herbalism, the study and use of plants for their medicinal properties, many records of the Holocene period date early botanical knowledge as far back as 10,000 years ago. This early unrecorded knowledge of plants was discovered in ancient sites of human occupation within Tennessee, the early recorded history of botany includes many ancient writings and plant classifications. Examples of early works have been found in ancient texts from India dating back to before 1100 BC, in archaic Avestan writings. His major works, Enquiry into Plants and On the Causes of Plants, constitute the most important contributions to science until the Middle Ages. De Materia Medica was widely read for more than 1,500 years, important contributions from the medieval Muslim world include Ibn Wahshiyyas Nabatean Agriculture, Abū Ḥanīfa Dīnawarīs the Book of Plants, and Ibn Bassals The Classification of Soils. In the early 13th century, Abu al-Abbas al-Nabati, and Ibn al-Baitar wrote on botany in a systematic and scientific manner and these gardens continued the practical value of earlier physic gardens, often associated with monasteries, in which plants were cultivated for medical use. They supported the growth of botany as an academic subject, lectures were given about the plants grown in the gardens and their medical uses demonstrated. Botanical gardens came much later to northern Europe, the first in England was the University of Oxford Botanic Garden in 1621, throughout this period, botany remained firmly subordinate to medicine. German physician Leonhart Fuchs was one of the three German fathers of botany, along with theologian Otto Brunfels and physician Hieronymus Bock, Fuchs and Brunfels broke away from the tradition of copying earlier works to make original observations of their own. Bock created his own system of plant classification, physician Valerius Cordus authored a botanically and pharmacologically important herbal Historia Plantarum in 1544 and a pharmacopoeia of lasting importance, the Dispensatorium in 1546. Naturalist Conrad von Gesner and herbalist John Gerard published herbals covering the medicinal uses of plants, naturalist Ulisse Aldrovandi was considered the father of natural history, which included the study of plants
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History of botany
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Rudimentary botanical science began with empirically-based plant lore passed from generation to generation in the oral traditions of paleolithic hunter-gatherers. In Europe, this early botanical science was soon overshadowed by a preoccupation with the medicinal properties of plants that lasted more than 1000 years. During this time, the works of classical antiquity were reproduced in manuscripts. In China and the Arab world, the Greco-Roman work on plants was preserved and extended. Herbals were replaced by floras, books that described the plants of local regions. The invention of the microscope stimulated the study of plant anatomy, with the expansion of trade and exploration beyond Europe, the many new plants being discovered were subjected to an increasingly rigorous process of naming, description, and classification. Botany and zoology are, historically, the disciplines of biology whose history is closely associated with the natural sciences chemistry, physics. A distinction can be made between botanical science in a sense, as the study of plants themselves, and botany as applied science. Early natural history divided pure botany into three main streams morphology-classification, anatomy and physiology – that is, external form, internal structure, and functional operation. Since the origin of science there has been a progressive increase in the scope of the subject as technology has opened up new techniques. Modern molecular systematics, for example, entails the principles and techniques of taxonomy, molecular biology, computer science, within botany there are a number of sub-disciplines that focus on particular plant groups, each with their own range of related studies. Included here are, phycology, pteridology, bryology and palaeobotany, to this list can be added mycology, the study of fungi, which were once treated as plants, but are now ranked as a unique kingdom. During the Neolithic Revolution plant knowledge increased most obviously through the use of plants for food, all of todays staple foods were domesticated in prehistoric times as a gradual process of selection of higher-yielding varieties took place, possibly unknowingly, over hundreds to thousands of years. Legumes were cultivated on all continents but cereals made up most of the diet, rice in East Asia, wheat and barley in the Middle east. By Greco-Roman times popular food plants of today, including grapes, apples, figs, Botanical authority William Stearn has observed that cultivated plants are mankinds most vital and precious heritage from remote antiquity. It is also from the Neolithic, in about 3000 BC, however protobotany, the first pre-scientific written record of plants, did not begin with food, it was born out of the medicinal literature of Egypt, China, Mesopotamia and India. Ancient India An early example of ancient Indian plant classification is found in the Rigveda, Plants are divided into vṛska, osadhi and virudha, with further subdivisions. The sacred Hindu text Atharvaveda divides plants into eight classes, visakha, manjari, sthambini, prastanavati, ekasṛnga, pratanavati, amsumati, and kandini
6.
Paleobotany
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Paleobotany includes the study of terrestrial plant fossils, as well as the study of prehistoric marine photoautotrophs, such as photosynthetic algae, seaweeds or kelp. A closely related field is palynology, which is the study of fossilized and extant spores, Paleobotany has also become important to the field of archaeology, primarily for the use of phytoliths in relative dating and in paleoethnobotany. Macroscopic remains of vascular plants are first found in the fossil record during the Silurian Period of the Paleozoic era. An important early land plant fossil locality is the Rhynie Chert, the Rhynie chert is an Early Devonian sinter deposit composed primarily of silica. It is exceptional due to its preservation of different clades of plants, from mosses and lycopods to more unusual. Many fossil animals, including arthropods and arachnids, are found in the Rhynie Chert. Plant-derived macrofossils become abundant in the Late Devonian and include tree trunks, fronds, angiosperms evolved during the Mesozoic, and flowering plant pollen and leaves first appear during the Early Cretaceous, approximately 130 million years ago. A plant fossil is any preserved part of a plant that has long since died, such fossils may be prehistoric impressions that are many millions of years old, or bits of charcoal that are only a few hundred years old. Prehistoric plants are various groups of plants that lived before recorded history, plant fossils can be preserved in a variety of ways, each of which can give different types of information about the original parent plant. These modes of preservation are discussed in the pages on fossils. These are the most commonly found type of plant fossil and they provide good morphological detail, especially of dorsiventral plant parts such as leaves. If the cuticle is preserved, they can also yield fine anatomical detail of the epidermis, little other detail of cellular anatomy is normally preserved. These provide fine detail of the anatomy of the plant tissue. Morphological detail can also be determined by serial sectioning, but this is time consuming and difficult. These only tend to preserve the more robust plant parts such as seeds or woody stems and they can provide information about the three-dimensional form of the plant, and in the case of casts of tree stumps can provide evidence of the density of the original vegetation. However, they rarely preserve any fine morphological detail or cell anatomy, a subset of such fossils are pith casts, where the centre of a stem is either hollow or has delicate pith. After death, sediment enters and forms a cast of the cavity of the stem. The best known examples of pith casts are in the Carboniferous Sphenophyta and these can provide very fine, three-dimensional morphological detail, and have proved especially important in the study of reproductive structures that can be severely distorted in adpressions
7.
Plant pathology
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Plant pathology is the scientific study of diseases in plants caused by pathogens and environmental conditions. Organisms that cause infectious disease include fungi, oomycetes, bacteria, viruses, viroids, virus-like organisms, phytoplasmas, protozoa, nematodes, not included are ectoparasites like insects, mites, vertebrate, or other pests that affect plant health by consumption of plant tissues. Control of plant diseases is crucial to the production of food. Plants in both natural and cultivated populations carry inherent disease resistance, but there are examples of devastating plant disease impacts. However, disease control is reasonably successful for most crops, plant diseases cause major economic losses for farmers worldwide. The Food and Agriculture Organization estimates indeed that pests and diseases are responsible for about 25% of crop loss, most phytopathogenic fungi belong to the Ascomycetes and the Basidiomycetes. The fungi reproduce sexually and asexually via the production of spores and other structures. Spores may be spread long distances by air or water, or they may be soilborne, Many soil inhabiting fungi are capable of living saprotrophically, carrying out the part of their life cycle in the soil. These are known as facultative saprotrophs, fungal diseases may be controlled through the use of fungicides and other agriculture practices. However, new races of fungi often evolve that are resistant to various fungicides, biotrophic fungal pathogens colonize living plant tissue and obtain nutrients from living host cells. Necrotrophic fungal pathogens infect and kill host tissue and extract nutrients from the dead host cells, see the powdery mildew and rice blast images, below. Significant fungal plant pathogens include, Fusarium spp, magnaporthe grisea Sclerotinia sclerotiorum Ustilago spp. The oomycetes are not true fungi but are fungus-like organisms and they include some of the most destructive plant pathogens including the genus Phytophthora, which includes the causal agents of potato late blight and sudden oak death. Particular species of oomycetes are responsible for root rot, despite not being closely related to the fungi, the oomycetes have developed very similar infection strategies. Oomycetes are capable of using effector proteins to turn off a plants defenses in its infection process, plant pathologists commonly group them with fungal pathogens. Significant oomycete plant pathogens Pythium spp and these are caused by species of Plasmodiophora and Spongospora, respectively. Most bacteria that are associated with plants are actually saprotrophic and do no harm to the plant itself, however, a small number, around 100 known species, are able to cause disease. Bacterial diseases are more prevalent in subtropical and tropical regions of the world
8.
Plant
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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
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Algae
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Algae is an informal term for a large, diverse group of photosynthetic organisms which are not necessarily closely related, and is thus polyphyletic. Included organisms range from unicellular genera, such as Chlorella and the diatoms, to forms, such as the giant kelp. Most are aquatic and autotrophic and lack many of the cell and tissue types, such as stomata, xylem, and phloem. No definition of algae is generally accepted, one definition is that algae have chlorophyll as their primary photosynthetic pigment and lack a sterile covering of cells around their reproductive cells. Some authors exclude all prokaryotes thus do not consider cyanobacteria as algae, Algae constitute a polyphyletic group since they do not include a common ancestor, and although their plastids seem to have a single origin, from cyanobacteria, they were acquired in different ways. Green algae are examples of algae that have primary chloroplasts derived from endosymbiotic cyanobacteria, diatoms and brown algae are examples of algae with secondary chloroplasts derived from an endosymbiotic red alga. Algae exhibit a range of reproductive strategies, from simple asexual cell division to complex forms of sexual reproduction. Algae lack the various structures that characterize land plants, such as the phyllids of bryophytes, rhizoids in nonvascular plants, and the roots, leaves, and other organs found in tracheophytes. Most are phototrophic, although some are mixotrophic, deriving energy both from photosynthesis and uptake of organic carbon either by osmotrophy, myzotrophy, or phagotrophy. Some other heterotrophic organisms, such as the apicomplexans, are derived from cells whose ancestors possessed plastids. Fossilized filamentous algae from the Vindhya basin have been dated back to 1.6 to 1.7 billion years ago, the singular alga is the Latin word for seaweed and retains that meaning in English. Although some speculate that it is related to Latin algēre, be cold, a more likely source is alliga, binding, entwining. The Ancient Greek word for seaweed was φῦκος, which could mean either the seaweed or a red dye derived from it, the Latinization, fūcus, meant primarily the cosmetic rouge. It could be any color, black, red, green, accordingly, the modern study of marine and freshwater algae is called either phycology or algology, depending on whether the Greek or Latin root is used. The name Fucus appears in a number of taxa, most algae contain chloroplasts that are similar in structure to cyanobacteria. Chloroplasts contain circular DNA like that in cyanobacteria and presumably represent reduced endosymbiotic cyanobacteria, however, the exact origin of the chloroplasts is different among separate lineages of algae, reflecting their acquisition during different endosymbiotic events. The table below describes the composition of the three groups of algae. Their lineage relationships are shown in the figure in the upper right, many of these groups contain some members that are no longer photosynthetic
10.
Archaeplastida
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The Archaeplastida are a major group of eukaryotes, comprising the red algae, the green algae, and the land plants, together with a small group of freshwater unicellular algae called glaucophytes. The chloroplasts of all organisms are surrounded by two membranes, suggesting they developed directly from endosymbiotic cyanobacteria. In all other groups besides the amoeboid Paulinella chromatophora, the chloroplasts are surrounded by three or four membranes, suggesting they were acquired secondarily from red or green algae, the cells of the Archaeplastida typically lack centrioles and have mitochondria with flat cristae. They usually have a wall including cellulose, and food is stored in the form of starch. However, these characteristics are shared with other eukaryotes. The main evidence that the Archaeplastida form a group comes from genetic studies. Based on results to date, alternative evolutionary scenarios to a primary endosymbiosis is not possible to confirm or refute. Photosynthetic organisms with plastids of different origin do not belong to the Archaeplastida, the archaeplastidans fall into two main evolutionary lines. The red algae are pigmented with chlorophyll a and phycobiliproteins, like most cyanobacteria, the glaucophytes have typical cyanobacterial pigments, and are unusual in retaining a cell wall within their plastids. Archaeplastida should not be confused with the older and obsolete name Archiplastideae, the consensus in 2005, when the group consisting of the glaucophytes and red and green algae and land plants was named Archaeplastida, was that it was a clade, i. e. was monophyletic. Many studies published since then have provided evidence in agreement, other studies, though, have suggested that the group is paraphyletic. To date, the situation unresolved, but a strong signal for Plantae monophyly has been demonstrated in a recent study. The assumption made here is that Archaeplastida is a valid clade, various names have been given to the group. Some authors have referred to the group as plants or Plantae. However, the name Plantae is ambiguous, since it has also applied to less inclusive clades, such as Viridiplantae. To distinguish, the group is sometimes known as Plantae sensu lato. To avoid ambiguity, other names have been proposed, primoplantae, which appeared in 2004, seems to be the first new name suggested for this group. Another name applied to this node is Plastida, defined as the clade sharing plastids of primary origin in Magnolia virginiana Linnaeus 1753, although many studies have suggested the Archaeplastida form a monophyletic group, a 2009 paper argues that they are in fact paraphyletic
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Bryophyte
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Bryophyte is a traditional name used to refer to all embryophytes that are non-vascular plants, namely the mosses, hornworts, and liverworts, covering around 25,000 species. They are characteristically limited in size and prefer moist habitats although they can survive in drier environments, bryophytes are usually considered to be a paraphyletic group and not a natural group, although some studies have produced contrary results. Regardless of their status, the name is convenient and remains in use as a collective term. Bryophytes produce enclosed reproductive structures, but they produce neither flowers nor seeds, the term bryophyte comes from Greek βρύον, bryon tree-moss, oyster-green + φυτόν – phyton plant. Like all land plants, bryophytes have life cycles with alternation of generations, in each cycle, a haploid gametophyte, each of whose cells contains a fixed number of unpaired chromosomes, alternates with a diploid sporophyte, whose cell contain two sets of paired chromosomes. Gametophytes produce haploid sperm and eggs which fuse to form zygotes that grow into sporophytes. Sporophytes produce haploid spores by meiosis, that grow into gametophytes, bryophytes are gametophyte dominant, meaning that the more prominent, longer-lived plant is the haploid gametophyte. The diploid sporophytes appear only occasionally and remain attached to and nutritionally dependent on the gametophyte, in bryophytes, the sporophytes are always unbranched and produce a single sporangium. Liverworts, mosses and hornworts spend most of their lives as gametophytes, gametangia, archegonia and antheridia, are produced on the gametophytes, sometimes at the tips of shoots, in the axils of leaves or hidden under thalli. Some bryophytes, such as the liverwort Marchantia, create elaborate structures to bear the gametangia that are called gametangiophores, sperm are flagellated and must swim from the antheridia that produce them to archegonia which may be on a different plant. Arthropods can assist in transfer of sperm, fertilized eggs become zygotes, which develop into sporophyte embryos inside the archegonia. Mature sporophytes remain attached to the gametophyte and they consist of a stalk called a seta and a single sporangium or capsule. Inside the sporangium, haploid spores are produced by meiosis and these are dispersed, most commonly by wind, and if they land in a suitable environment can develop into a new gametophyte. Thus bryophytes disperse by a combination of swimming sperm and spores, in a similar to lycophytes, ferns. The arrangement of antheridia and archegonia on an individual plant is usually constant within a species. The main division is between species in which the antheridia and archegonia occur on the plant and those in which they occur on different plants. The term monoicous may be used where antheridia and archegonia occur on the same gametophyte, in seed plants, monoecious is used where flowers with anthers and flowers with ovules occur on the same sporophyte and dioecious where they occur on different sporophytes. These terms occasionally may be used instead of monoicous and dioicous to describe bryophyte gametophytes, monoecious and monoicous are both derived from the Greek for one house, dioecious and dioicous from the Greek for two houses
