Calicotome
Calicotome is a genus of flowering plants in the legume family, Fabaceae. It belongs to the sub family Faboideae, it may be synonymous with Cytisus. All species of the genus are thorny shrubs; the ancient Greeks believed that tyrants in Hades were punished by being beaten with the thorny calycotomes. Calicotome comprises the following species: Calicotome infesta Guss. subsp. Infesta Guss. subsp. Intermedia Greuter Calicotome ligustica Fiori Calicotome rigida Maire & Weiller Calicotome spinosa Link Calicotome villosa Link
Synonym (taxonomy)
In scientific nomenclature, a synonym is a scientific name that applies to a taxon that goes by a different scientific name, although the term is used somewhat differently in the zoological code of nomenclature. For example, Linnaeus was the first to give a scientific name to the Norway spruce, which he called Pinus abies; this name is no longer in use: it is now a synonym of the current scientific name, Picea abies. Unlike synonyms in other contexts, in taxonomy a synonym is not interchangeable with the name of which it is a synonym. In taxonomy, synonyms have a different status. For any taxon with a particular circumscription and rank, only one scientific name is considered to be the correct one at any given time. A synonym cannot exist in isolation: it is always an alternative to a different scientific name. Given that the correct name of a taxon depends on the taxonomic viewpoint used a name, one taxonomist's synonym may be another taxonomist's correct name. Synonyms may arise whenever the same taxon is named more than once, independently.
They may arise when existing taxa are changed, as when two taxa are joined to become one, a species is moved to a different genus, a variety is moved to a different species, etc. Synonyms come about when the codes of nomenclature change, so that older names are no longer acceptable. To the general user of scientific names, in fields such as agriculture, ecology, general science, etc. A synonym is a name, used as the correct scientific name but, displaced by another scientific name, now regarded as correct, thus Oxford Dictionaries Online defines the term as "a taxonomic name which has the same application as another one, superseded and is no longer valid." In handbooks and general texts, it is useful to have synonyms mentioned as such after the current scientific name, so as to avoid confusion. For example, if the much advertised name change should go through and the scientific name of the fruit fly were changed to Sophophora melanogaster, it would be helpful if any mention of this name was accompanied by "".
Synonyms used in this way may not always meet the strict definitions of the term "synonym" in the formal rules of nomenclature which govern scientific names. Changes of scientific name have two causes: they may be taxonomic or nomenclatural. A name change may be caused by changes in the circumscription, position or rank of a taxon, representing a change in taxonomic, scientific insight. A name change may be due to purely nomenclatural reasons, that is, based on the rules of nomenclature. Speaking in general, name changes for nomenclatural reasons have become less frequent over time as the rules of nomenclature allow for names to be conserved, so as to promote stability of scientific names. In zoological nomenclature, codified in the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature, synonyms are different scientific names of the same taxonomic rank that pertain to that same taxon. For example, a particular species could, over time, have had two or more species-rank names published for it, while the same is applicable at higher ranks such as genera, orders, etc.
In each case, the earliest published name is called the senior synonym, while the name is the junior synonym. In the case where two names for the same taxon have been published the valid name is selected accorded to the principle of the first reviser such that, for example, of the names Strix scandiaca and Strix noctua, both published by Linnaeus in the same work at the same date for the taxon now determined to be the snowy owl, the epithet scandiaca has been selected as the valid name, with noctua becoming the junior synonym. One basic principle of zoological nomenclature is that the earliest published name, the senior synonym, by default takes precedence in naming rights and therefore, unless other restrictions interfere, must be used for the taxon. However, junior synonyms are still important to document, because if the earliest name cannot be used the next available junior synonym must be used for the taxon. For other purposes, if a researcher is interested in consulting or compiling all known information regarding a taxon, some of this may well have been published under names now regarded as outdated and so it is again useful to know a list of historic synonyms which may have been used for a given current taxon name.
Objective synonyms refer to taxa with same rank. This may be species-group taxa of the same rank with the same type specimen, genus-group taxa of the same rank with the same type species or if their type species are themselves objective synonyms, of family-group taxa with the same type genus, etc. In the case of subjective synonyms, there is no such shared type, so the synonymy is open to taxonomic judgement, meaning that th
Google Books
Google Books is a service from Google Inc. that searches the full text of books and magazines that Google has scanned, converted to text using optical character recognition, stored in its digital database. Books are provided either by publishers and authors, through the Google Books Partner Program, or by Google's library partners, through the Library Project. Additionally, Google has partnered with a number of magazine publishers to digitize their archives; the Publisher Program was first known as Google Print when it was introduced at the Frankfurt Book Fair in October 2004. The Google Books Library Project, which scans works in the collections of library partners and adds them to the digital inventory, was announced in December 2004; the Google Books initiative has been hailed for its potential to offer unprecedented access to what may become the largest online body of human knowledge and promoting the democratization of knowledge. However, it has been criticized for potential copyright violations, lack of editing to correct the many errors introduced into the scanned texts by the OCR process.
As of October 2015, the number of scanned book titles was over 25 million, but the scanning process has slowed down in American academic libraries. Google estimated in 2010 that there were about 130 million distinct titles in the world, stated that it intended to scan all of them. Results from Google Books show up in both the universal Google Search and in the dedicated Google Books search website. In response to search queries, Google Books allows users to view full pages from books in which the search terms appear if the book is out of copyright or if the copyright owner has given permission. If Google believes the book is still under copyright, a user sees "snippets" of text around the queried search terms. All instances of the search terms in the book text appear with a yellow highlight; the four access levels used on Google Books are: Full view: Books in the public domain are available for "full view" and can be downloaded for free. In-print books acquired through the Partner Program are available for full view if the publisher has given permission, although this is rare.
Preview: For in-print books where permission has been granted, the number of viewable pages is limited to a "preview" set by a variety of access restrictions and security measures, some based on user-tracking. The publisher can set the percentage of the book available for preview. Users are restricted from downloading or printing book previews. A watermark reading "Copyrighted material" appears at the bottom of pages. All books acquired through the Partner Program are available for preview. Snippet view: A'snippet view' – two to three lines of text surrounding the queried search term – is displayed in cases where Google does not have permission of the copyright owner to display a preview; this could be because Google can not identify the owner declined permission. If a search term appears many times in a book, Google displays no more than three snippets, thus preventing the user from viewing too much of the book. Google does not display any snippets for certain reference books, such as dictionaries, where the display of snippets can harm the market for the work.
Google maintains. No preview: Google displays search results for books that have not been digitized; as these books have not been scanned, their text is not searchable and only the metadata such as the title, publisher, number of pages, ISBN, subject and copyright information, in some cases, a table of contents and book summary is available. In effect, this is similar to an online library card catalog. In response to criticism from groups such as the American Association of Publishers and the Authors Guild, Google announced an opt-out policy in August 2005, through which copyright owners could provide a list of titles that it did not want scanned, Google would respect the request. Google stated that it would not scan any in-copyright books between August and 1 November 2005, to provide the owners with the opportunity to decide which books to exclude from the Project. Thus, Google provides a copyright owner with three choices with respect to any work: It can participate in the Partner Program to make a book available for preview or full view, in which case it would share revenue derived from the display of pages from the work in response to user queries.
It can let Google scan the book under the Library Project and display snippets in response to user queries. It can opt out of the Library Project. If the book has been scanned, Google will reset its access level as'No preview'. Most scanned works are commercially available. In addition to procuring books from libraries, Google obtains books from its publisher partners, through the "Partner Program" – designed to help publishers and authors promote their books. Publishers and authors submit either a digital copy of their book in EPUB or PDF format, or a print copy to Google, made available on Google Books for preview; the publisher can control the percentage of the book available for preview, with the minimum being 20%. They can choose to make the book viewable, allow users to download a PDF copy. Books can be made available for sale on Google Play. Unlike the Library Project, this does not raise any copyright concerns as it is conducted pursuant to an agreement with the publisher; the publisher can choose to withdraw from the agreement at any time.
For many books, Google Books displays the original page numbers. However, Tim Pa
Species
In biology, a species is the basic unit of classification and a taxonomic rank of an organism, as well as a unit of biodiversity. A species is defined as the largest group of organisms in which any two individuals of the appropriate sexes or mating types can produce fertile offspring by sexual reproduction. Other ways of defining species include their karyotype, DNA sequence, behaviour or ecological niche. In addition, paleontologists use the concept of the chronospecies since fossil reproduction cannot be examined. While these definitions may seem adequate, when looked at more they represent problematic species concepts. For example, the boundaries between related species become unclear with hybridisation, in a species complex of hundreds of similar microspecies, in a ring species. Among organisms that reproduce only asexually, the concept of a reproductive species breaks down, each clone is a microspecies. All species are given a two-part name, a "binomial"; the first part of a binomial is the genus.
The second part is called the specific epithet. For example, Boa constrictor is one of four species of the genus Boa. None of these is satisfactory definitions, but scientists and conservationists need a species definition which allows them to work, regardless of the theoretical difficulties. If species were fixed and distinct from one another, there would be no problem, but evolutionary processes cause species to change continually, to grade into one another. Species were seen from the time of Aristotle until the 18th century as fixed kinds that could be arranged in a hierarchy, the great chain of being. In the 19th century, biologists grasped. Charles Darwin's 1859 book The Origin of Species explained how species could arise by natural selection; that understanding was extended in the 20th century through genetics and population ecology. Genetic variability arises from mutations and recombination, while organisms themselves are mobile, leading to geographical isolation and genetic drift with varying selection pressures.
Genes can sometimes be exchanged between species by horizontal gene transfer. Viruses are a special case, driven by a balance of mutation and selection, can be treated as quasispecies. Biologists and taxonomists have made many attempts to define species, beginning from morphology and moving towards genetics. Early taxonomists such as Linnaeus had no option but to describe what they saw: this was formalised as the typological or morphological species concept. Ernst Mayr emphasised reproductive isolation, but this, like other species concepts, is hard or impossible to test. Biologists have tried to refine Mayr's definition with the recognition and cohesion concepts, among others. Many of the concepts are quite similar or overlap, so they are not easy to count: the biologist R. L. Mayden recorded about 24 concepts, the philosopher of science John Wilkins counted 26. Wilkins further grouped the species concepts into seven basic kinds of concepts: agamospecies for asexual organisms biospecies for reproductively isolated sexual organisms ecospecies based on ecological niches evolutionary species based on lineage genetic species based on gene pool morphospecies based on form or phenotype and taxonomic species, a species as determined by a taxonomist.
A typological species is a group of organisms in which individuals conform to certain fixed properties, so that pre-literate people recognise the same taxon as do modern taxonomists. The clusters of variations or phenotypes within specimens would differentiate the species; this method was used as a "classical" method of determining species, such as with Linnaeus early in evolutionary theory. However, different phenotypes are not different species. Species named in this manner are called morphospecies. In the 1970s, Robert R. Sokal, Theodore J. Crovello and Peter Sneath proposed a variation on this, a phenetic species, defined as a set of organisms with a similar phenotype to each other, but a different phenotype from other sets of organisms, it differs from the morphological species concept in including a numerical measure of distance or similarity to cluster entities based on multivariate comparisons of a reasonably large number of phenotypic traits. A mate-recognition species is a group of sexually reproducing organisms that recognize one another as potential mates.
Expanding on this to allow for post-mating isolation, a cohesion species is the most inclusive population of individuals having the potential for phenotypic cohesion through intrinsic cohesion mechanisms. A further development of the recognition concept is provided by the biosemiotic concept of species. In microbiology, genes can move even between distantly related bacteria extending to the whole bacterial domain; as a rule of thumb, microbiologists have assumed that kinds of Bacteria or Archaea with 16S ribosomal RNA gene sequences more similar than 97% to each other need to be checked by DNA-DNA hybridisation to decide if they belong to the same species or not. This concept was narrowed in 2006 to a similarity of 98.7%. DNA-DNA hybri
Heath
A heath is a shrubland habitat found on free-draining infertile, acidic soils and is characterised by open, low-growing woody vegetation. Moorland is related to high-ground heaths with—especially in Great Britain—a cooler and damper climate. Heaths are fast disappearing and considered a rare habitat in Europe, they form extensive and diverse communities across Australia in humid and sub-humid areas where fire regimes with recurring burning are required for the maintenance of the heathlands. More diverse though less widespread heath communities occur in Southern Africa. Extensive heath communities can be found in the California chaparral, New Caledonia, central Chile and along the shores of the Mediterranean Sea. In addition to these extensive heath areas, the vegetation type is found in scattered locations across all continents, except Antarctica. Heathland is favoured where climatic conditions are hard and dry in summer, soils acidic, of low fertility, sandy and free-draining. Heaths are dominated by low shrubs, 20 centimetres to 2 metres tall.
Heath vegetation can be plant-species rich, heathlands of Australia are home to some 3,700 endemic or typical species in addition to numerous less restricted species. The fynbos heathlands of South Africa are second only to tropical rainforests in plant biodiversity with over 7,000 species. In marked contrast, the tiny pockets of heathland in Europe are depauperate with a flora consisting of heather and gorse; the bird fauna of heathlands are cosmopolitan species of the region. In the depauperate heathlands of Europe, bird species tend to be more characteristic of the community and include Montagu's harrier, the tree pipit. In Australia the heathland avian fauna is dominated by nectar-feeding birds such as honey-eaters and lorikeets although numerous other birds from emus to eagles are common in Australian heathlands. Australian heathlands are home to the world's only nectar-feeding terrestrial mammal: the honey possum; the bird fauna of the South African fynbos includes sunbirds and siskins.
Heathlands are an excellent habitat for insects including ants, moths and wasps with many species being restricted to it. One such example of an organism restricted to heathland is the silver-studded blue butterfly, Plebejus argus. Anthropogenic heath habitats are a cultural landscape that can be found worldwide in locations as diverse as northern and western Europe, the Americas, New Zealand and New Guinea; these heaths were created or expanded by centuries of human clearance of the natural forest and woodland vegetation, by grazing and burning. In some cases this clearance went so far that parts of the heathland have given way to open spots of pure sand and sand dunes, with a local climate that in Europe, can experience temperatures of 50 °C in summer, drying the sand spot bordering the heathland and further raising its vulnerability for wildfires. Referring to heathland in England, Oliver Rackham says, "Heaths are the product of human activities and need to be managed as heathland. In recent years the conservation value of these man-made heaths has become much more appreciated, most heathlands are protected.
However they are threatened by tree incursion because of the discontinuation of traditional management techniques such as grazing and burning that mediated the landscapes. Some are threatened by urban sprawl. Anthropogenic heathlands are maintained artificially by a combination of grazing and periodic burning, or mowing; the re-colonising tree species will depend on what is available as the local seed source, thus it may not reflect the natural vegetation before the heathland became established. Bolster heath Chalk heath Garrigue Maquis shrubland Matorral Scrubland The Countryside Agency information on types of open land Origin of the word'heath'
Flowering plant
The flowering plants known as angiosperms, Angiospermae or Magnoliophyta, are the most diverse group of land plants, with 64 orders, 416 families 13,164 known genera and c. 369,000 known species. Like gymnosperms, angiosperms are seed-producing plants. However, they are distinguished from gymnosperms by characteristics including flowers, endosperm within the seeds, the production of fruits that contain the seeds. Etymologically, angiosperm means a plant; the term comes from the Greek words sperma. The ancestors of flowering plants diverged from gymnosperms in the Triassic Period, 245 to 202 million years ago, the first flowering plants are known from 160 mya, they diversified extensively during the Early Cretaceous, became widespread by 120 mya, replaced conifers as the dominant trees from 100 to 60 mya. Angiosperms differ from other seed plants in several ways, described in the table below; these distinguishing characteristics taken together have made the angiosperms the most diverse and numerous land plants and the most commercially important group to humans.
Angiosperm stems are made up of seven layers. 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 phloem form concentric rings. In the dicotyledons, the bundles in the 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. By the formation of a layer of cambium between the bundles, a complete ring is formed, a regular periodical increase in thickness results from the development of xylem on the inside and phloem on the outside; the soft phloem becomes crushed, but the hard wood persists and forms the bulk of the stem and branches of the woody perennial. Owing to differences in the character of the elements produced at the beginning and end of the season, the wood is marked out in transverse section into concentric rings, one for each season of growth, called annual rings.
Among the monocotyledons, the bundles are more numerous in the young stem and are scattered through the ground tissue. They 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, 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 from the axil of a leaf; as in violets, a flower arises singly in the axil of an ordinary foliage-leaf. More the flower-bearing portion of the plant is distinguished from the foliage-bearing or vegetative portion, forms a more or less elaborate branch-system called an inflorescence. There are two kinds of reproductive cells produced by flowers. Microspores, which will divide to become pollen grains, are the "male" cells and are borne in the stamens.
The "female" cells called megaspores, which will divide to become the egg cell, are contained in the ovule and enclosed in the carpel. The flower may consist only of these parts, as in willow, where each flower comprises only a few stamens or two carpels. Other structures are present and serve to protect the sporophylls and to form an envelope attractive to pollinators; the individual members of these surrounding structures are known as petals. The outer series is green and leaf-like, functions to protect the rest of the flower the bud; the inner series is, in general, white or brightly colored, is more delicate in structure. It functions to attract bird pollinators. Attraction is effected by color and nectar, which may be secreted in some part of the flower; the characteristics that attract pollinators account for the popularity of flowers and flowering plants among humans. While the majority of flowers are perfect or hermaphrodite, flowering plants have developed numerous morphological and physiological mechanisms to reduce or prevent self-fertilization.
Heteromorphic flowers have short carpels and long stamens, or vice versa, so animal pollinators cannot transfer pollen to the pistil. Homomorphic flowers may employ a biochemical mechanism called self-incompatibility to discriminate between self and non-self pollen grains. In other species, the male and female parts are morphologically separated, developing on different flowers; the botanical term "Angiosperm", from the Ancient Greek αγγείον, angeíon and σπέρμα, was coined in the form Angiospermae by Paul Hermann in 1690, as the name of one of his primary divisions of the plant kingdom. This included flowering plants possessing seeds enclosed in capsules, distinguished from his Gymnospermae, or flowering plants with achenial or schizo-carpic fruits, the whole fruit or each of its pieces being here regarded as a seed and naked; the term and its antonym were maintained by Carl Linnaeus with the same sense, but with restricted application, in the names of the orders of his class Didynamia. Its use with any
Henry A. Wallace Beltsville Agricultural Research Center
The Henry A. Wallace Beltsville Agricultural Research Center known as the National Agricultural Research Center, is a unit of the United States Department of Agriculture's Agricultural Research Service, it is located at 39°02′N 76°53′W in unincorporated Prince George's County, with sections within the Beltsville census-designated place. The BARC is named for Henry A. Wallace, former United States vice president and secretary of agriculture. BARC houses the Abraham Lincoln Building of the National Agricultural Library. Among its research programs are Air Quality; the center's Harvest for the Hungry program donates about 75,000 pounds of fruits and vegetables each year for distribution to local charities, in conjunction with volunteers from the community who do much of the labor of harvesting. Each February, BARC hosts the Washington's Birthday Marathon, the eighth oldest marathon in the United States. During the September 24, 2001 tornado outbreak, the BARC facilities sustained extensive damage as the result of an F3 tornado.
Beltsville Small White Official site Photos of damage from the September 24, 2001 tornado
