Pinophyta
The Pinophyta known as Coniferophyta or Coniferae, or as conifers, are a division of vascular land plants containing a single extant class, Pinopsida. They are gymnosperms, cone-bearing seed plants. All extant conifers are perennial woody plants with secondary growth; the great majority are trees. Examples include cedars, Douglas firs, firs, kauri, pines, redwoods and yews; as of 1998, the division Pinophyta was estimated to contain eight families, 68 genera, 629 living species. Although the total number of species is small, conifers are ecologically important, they are the dominant plants over large areas of land, most notably the taiga of the Northern Hemisphere, but in similar cool climates in mountains further south. Boreal conifers have many wintertime adaptations; the narrow conical shape of northern conifers, their downward-drooping limbs, help them shed snow. Many of them seasonally alter their biochemistry to make them more resistant to freezing. While tropical rainforests have more biodiversity and turnover, the immense conifer forests of the world represent the largest terrestrial carbon sink.
Conifers are of great economic value for softwood paper production. The earliest conifers in the fossil record date to the late Carboniferous period arising from Cordaites, a genus of seed-bearing Gondwanan plants with cone-like fertile structures. Pinophytes and Ginkgophytes all developed at this time. An important adaptation of these gymnosperms was allowing plants to live without being so dependent on water. Other adaptations are pollen and the seed, which allows the embryo to be transported and developed elsewhere. Conifers appear to be one of the taxa that benefited from the Permian–Triassic extinction event, were the dominant land plants of the Mesozoic, they were overtaken by the flowering plants, which first appeared in the Cretaceous, became dominant in the Cenozoic era. They were the main food of herbivorous dinosaurs, their resins and poisons would have given protection against herbivores. Reproductive features of modern conifers had evolved by the end of the Mesozoic era. Conifer is a Latin word, a compound of conus and ferre, meaning "the one that bears cone".
The division name Pinophyta conforms to the rules of the International Code of Nomenclature for algae and plants, which state that the names of higher taxa in plants are either formed from the name of an included family, in this case Pinaceae, or are descriptive. A descriptive name in widespread use for the conifers is Coniferae. According to the ICN, it is possible to use a name formed by replacing the termination -aceae in the name of an included family, in this case preferably Pinaceae, by the appropriate termination, in the case of this division ‑ophyta. Alternatively, "descriptive botanical names" may be used at any rank above family. Both are allowed; this means that if conifers are considered a division, they may be called Coniferae. As a class they may be called Coniferae; as an order they may be called Coniferae or Coniferales. Conifers are the largest and economically most important component group of the gymnosperms, but they comprise only one of the four groups; the division Pinophyta consists of just one class, which includes both living and fossil taxa.
Subdivision of the living conifers into two or more orders has been proposed from time to time. The most seen in the past was a split into two orders and Pinales, but recent research into DNA sequences suggests that this interpretation leaves the Pinales without Taxales as paraphyletic, the latter order is no longer considered distinct. A more accurate subdivision would be to split the class into three orders, Pinales containing only Pinaceae, Araucariales containing Araucariaceae and Podocarpaceae, Cupressales containing the remaining families, but there has not been any significant support for such a split, with the majority of opinion preferring retention of all the families within a single order Pinales, despite their antiquity and diverse morphology; the conifers are now accepted as comprising seven families, with a total of 65–70 genera and 600–630 species. The seven most distinct families are linked in the box above right and phylogenetic diagram left. In other interpretations, the Cephalotaxaceae may be better included within the Taxaceae, some authors additionally recognize Phyllocladaceae as distinct from Podocarpaceae.
The family Taxodiaceae is here included in family Cupressaceae, but was recognized in the past and can still be found in many field guides. A new classification and linear sequence based on molecular data can be found in an article by Christenhusz et al; the conifers are an ancient group, with a fossil record extending back about 300 million years to the Paleozoic in the late Carboniferous period. Other classes and orders, now long extinct occur as fossils from the late Paleozoic and Mesozoic eras. Fossil conifers included many diverse forms, the most distinct from modern conifers being some herbaceous conifers with no woody stems. Major fossil orders of conifers or conifer-like plants include the Cordaitales, Vojnovskyales and also the Czekanowskiales (possibly
Fraxinus
Fraxinus, English name ash, is a genus of flowering plants in the olive and lilac family, Oleaceae. It contains 45–65 species of medium to large trees deciduous, though a few subtropical species are evergreen; the genus is widespread across much of Europe and North America. The tree's common English name, "ash", traces back to the Old English æsc which relates to the Proto-Indo-European for the tree, while the generic name originated in Latin from a Proto-Indo-European word for birch. Both words are used to mean "spear" in their respective languages as the wood is good for shafts; the leaves are opposite, pinnately compound, simple in a few species. The seeds, popularly known as "keys" or "helicopter seeds", are a type of fruit known as a samara. Most Fraxinus species are dioecious, having male and female flowers on separate plants but gender in ash is expressed as a continuum between male and female individuals, dominated by unisexual trees. With age, ash may change their sexual function from predominantly male and hermaphrodite towards femaleness.
Rowans or mountain ashes have leaves and buds superficially similar to those of true ashes, but belong to the unrelated genus Sorbus in the rose family. Species arranged into sections supported by phylogenetic analysis. Section DipetalaeFraxinus anomala Torr. Ex S. Watson – singleleaf ash Fraxinus dipetala Hook. & Arn. – California ash or two-petal ash Fraxinus quadrangulata Michx. – blue ash Fraxinus trifoliataSection FraxinusFraxinus angustifolia Vahl – narrow-leafed ash Fraxinus angustifolia subsp. Oxycarpa – Caucasian ash Fraxinus angustifolia subsp. Syriaca Fraxinus excelsior L. – European ash Fraxinus holotricha Koehne Fraxinus mandschurica Rupr. – Manchurian ash Fraxinus nigra Marshall – black ash Fraxinus pallisiae Wilmott – Pallis' ash Fraxinus sogdiana BgeSection Melioides sensu latoFraxinus chiisanensis Fraxinus cuspidata Torr. – fragrant ash Fraxinus platypoda Fraxinus spaethiana Lingelsh. – Späth's ashSection Melioides sensu strictoFraxinus albicans Buckley – Texas ash Fraxinus americana L. – white ash or American ash Fraxinus berlandieriana DC.
– Mexican ash Fraxinus caroliniana Mill. – Carolina ash Fraxinus latifolia Benth. – Oregon ash Fraxinus papillosa Lingelsh. – Chihuahua ash Fraxinus pennsylvanica Marshall – green ash Fraxinus profunda Bush – pumpkin ash Fraxinus uhdei Lingelsh. – Shamel ash or tropical ash Fraxinus velutina Torr. – velvet ash or Arizona ashSection OrnusFraxinus apertisquamifera Fraxinus baroniana Fraxinus bungeana DC. – Bunge's ash Fraxinus chinensis Roxb. – Chinese ash or Korean ash Fraxinus floribunda Wall. – Himalayan manna ash Fraxinus griffithii C. B. Clarke – Griffith's ash Fraxinus japonica – Japanese ash Fraxinus lanuginosa – Japanese ash Fraxinus longicuspis Fraxinus malacophylla Fraxinus micrantha Lingelsh. Fraxinus ornus L. – manna ash or flowering ash Fraxinus paxiana Lingelsh. Fraxinus sieboldiana Blume – Japanese flowering ashSection PaucifloraeFraxinus dubia Fraxinus gooddingii – Goodding's ash Fraxinus greggii A. Gray – Gregg's ash Fraxinus purpusii Fraxinus rufescensSection SciadanthusFraxinus dimorpha Fraxinus hubeiensis Ch'u & Shang & Su – 湖北梣 hu bei qin Fraxinus xanthoxyloides Wall.
Ex DC. – Afghan ash North American native ash tree species are a critical food source for North American frogs, as their fallen leaves are suitable for tadpoles to feed upon in ponds, large puddles, other water bodies. Lack of tannins in the American ash makes their leaves a good food source for the frogs, but reduces its resistance to the ash borer. Species with higher leaf tannin levels are taking the place of native ash, thanks to their greater resistance to the ash borer, they produce much less suitable food for the tadpoles, resulting in poor survival rates and small frog sizes. Ash species native to North America provide important habit and food for various other creatures native to North America, such as a long-horn beetle, avian species, mammalian species. Ash is used as a food plant by the larvae of some Lepidoptera species; the emerald ash borer is a wood-boring beetle accidentally introduced to North America from eastern Asia via solid wood packing material in the late 1980s to early 1990s.
It has killed tens of millions of trees in 22 states in the United States and adjacent Ontario and Quebec in Canada. It threatens some seven billion ash trees in North America. Research is being conducted to determine if three native Asian wasps that are natural predators of EAB could be used as a biological control for the management of EAB populations in the United States; the public is being cautioned not to transport unfinished wood products, such as firewood, to slow the spread of this insect pest. The European ash, Fraxinus excelsior, has been affected by the fungus Hymenoscyphus fraxineus, causing ash dieback in a large number of trees since the mid-1990s in eastern and northern Europe; the disease has infected about 90% of Denmark's ash trees. At the end of October 2012 in the UK, the Food and Environment Research Agency reported that ash dieback had been discovered in mature woodland in Suffolk. In 2016, the ash tree was reported as in danger of extinction in Europe. Ash is a hardwood and is hard, dense and strong but elastic, extensively used for making bows, tool handles, baseball bats and other uses demanding high strength and resilience.
Ash
Raccoon
The raccoon, sometimes spelled racoon known as the common raccoon, North American raccoon, northern raccoon, or coon, is a medium-sized mammal native to North America. The raccoon is the largest of the procyonid family, having a body length of 40 to 70 cm and a body weight of 5 to 26 kg, its grayish coat consists of dense underfur which insulates it against cold weather. Three of the raccoon's most distinctive features are its dexterous front paws, its facial mask, its ringed tail, which are themes in the mythologies of the indigenous peoples of the Americas. Raccoons are noted for their intelligence, with studies showing that they are able to remember the solution to tasks for at least three years, they are nocturnal and omnivorous, eating about 40% invertebrates, 33% plants, 27% vertebrates. The original habitats of the raccoon are deciduous and mixed forests, but due to their adaptability they have extended their range to mountainous areas, coastal marshes, urban areas, where some homeowners consider them to be pests.
As a result of escapes and deliberate introductions in the mid-20th century, raccoons are now distributed across much of mainland Europe and Japan. Though thought to be solitary, there is now evidence that raccoons engage in gender-specific social behavior. Related females share a common area, while unrelated males live together in groups of up to four animals to maintain their positions against foreign males during the mating season, other potential invaders. Home range sizes vary anywhere from 3 hectares for females in cities to 5,000 hectares for males in prairies. After a gestation period of about 65 days, two to five young, known as "kits", are born in spring; the kits are subsequently raised by their mother until dispersal in late fall. Although captive raccoons have been known to live over 20 years, their life expectancy in the wild is only 1.8 to 3.1 years. In many areas and vehicular injury are the two most common causes of death; the word "raccoon" was adopted into English from the native Powhatan term, as used in the Colony of Virginia.
It was recorded on John Smith's list of Powhatan words as aroughcun, on that of William Strachey as arathkone. It has been identified as a reflex of a Proto-Algonquian root *ahrah-koon-em, meaning " one who rubs and scratches with its hands". Spanish colonists adopted the Spanish word mapache from the Nahuatl mapachtli of the Aztecs, meaning " one who takes everything in its hands". In many languages, the raccoon is named for its characteristic dousing behavior in conjunction with that language's term for bear, for example Waschbär in German, Huan Xiong in Chinese, orsetto lavatore in Italian, araiguma in Japanese. Alternatively, only the washing behavior might be referred to, as in Russian poloskun; the colloquial abbreviation coon is used in words like coonskin for fur clothing and in phrases like old coon as a self-designation of trappers. In the 1830s, the United States Whig Party used the raccoon as an emblem, causing them to be pejoratively known as "coons" by their political opponents, who saw them as too sympathetic to African-Americans.
Soon after that the term became an ethnic slur in use between 1880 and 1920, the term is still considered offensive. In the first decades after its discovery by the members of the expedition of Christopher Columbus, the first person to leave a written record about the species, taxonomists thought the raccoon was related to many different species, including dogs, cats and bears. Carl Linnaeus, the father of modern taxonomy, placed the raccoon in the genus Ursus, first as Ursus cauda elongata in the second edition of his Systema Naturae as Ursus Lotor in the tenth edition. In 1780, Gottlieb Conrad Christian Storr placed the raccoon in its own genus Procyon, which can be translated as either "before the dog" or "doglike", it is possible that Storr had its nocturnal lifestyle in mind and chose the star Procyon as eponym for the species. Based on fossil evidence from Russia and Bulgaria, the first known members of the family Procyonidae lived in Europe in the late Oligocene about 25 million years ago.
Similar tooth and skull structures suggest procyonids and weasels share a common ancestor, but molecular analysis indicates a closer relationship between raccoons and bears. After the then-existing species crossed the Bering Strait at least six million years in the early Miocene, the center of its distribution was in Central America. Coatis and raccoons have been considered to share common descent from a species in the genus Paranasua present between 5.2 and 6.0 million years ago. This assumption, based on morphological comparisons of fossils, conflicts with a 2006 genetic analysis which indicates raccoons are more related to ringtails. Unlike other procyonids, such as the crab-eating raccoon, the ancestors of the common raccoon left tropical and subtropical areas and migrated farther north about 2.5 million years ago, in a migration, confirmed by the discovery of fossils in the Great Plains dating back to the middle of the Pliocene. Its most recent ancestor was Procyon rexroadensis, a large Blancan raccoon from the Rexroad Formation characterized by its narrow back teeth and large lower jaw.
As of 2005, Mammal Species of the World recognizes 22 subspecies of raccoons. Four of these subspecies living only on small Central American and Caribbean islan
Birch
A birch is a thin-leaved deciduous hardwood tree of the genus Betula, in the family Betulaceae, which includes alders and hornbeams. It is related to the beech-oak family Fagaceae; the genus Betula contains 30 to 60 known taxa of which 11 are on the IUCN 2011 Red List of Threatened Species. They are a rather short-lived pioneer species widespread in the Northern Hemisphere in northern areas of temperate climates and in boreal climates. Birch species are small to medium-sized trees or shrubs of northern temperate and boreal climates; the simple leaves are alternate, singly or doubly serrate, feather-veined and stipulate. They appear in pairs, but these pairs are borne on spur-like, two-leaved, lateral branchlets; the fruit is a small samara. They differ from the alders in that the female catkins are not woody and disintegrate at maturity, falling apart to release the seeds, unlike the woody, cone-like female alder catkins; the bark of all birches is characteristically marked with long, horizontal lenticels, separates into thin, papery plates upon the paper birch.
Distinctive colors give the common names gray, black and yellow birch to different species. The buds form early and are full grown by midsummer, all are lateral, no terminal bud is formed; the wood of all the species is close-grained with a satiny texture and capable of taking a fine polish. The flowers are monoecious, opening with or before the leaves and borne once grown these leaves are 3–6 millimetres long on three-flowered clusters in the axils of the scales of drooping or erect catkins or aments. Staminate aments are pendulous, clustered or solitary in the axils of the last leaves of the branch of the year or near the ends of the short lateral branchlets of the year, they remain rigid during the winter. The scales of the staminate aments when mature are broadly ovate, yellow or orange color below the middle, dark chestnut brown at apex; each scale bears two bractlets and three sterile flowers, each flower consisting of a sessile, membranaceous two-lobed, calyx. Each calyx bears four short filaments with one-celled anthers or two filaments divided into two branches, each bearing a half-anther.
Anther cells open longitudinally. The pistillate aments are pendulous, solitary; the pistillate scales are oblong-ovate, three-lobed, pale yellow-green tinged with red, becoming brown at maturity. These scales bear each flower consisting of a naked ovary; the ovary is compressed, two-celled, crowned with two slender styles. Each scale bears a single small, winged nut, oval, with two persistent stigmas at the apex. Betula species are organised into five subgenera. Birches native to Europe and Asia include Betula albosinensis – Chinese red birch Betula alnoides – alder-leaf birch Betula ashburneri – Betula baschkirica – Betula bomiensis – Betula browicziana – Betula calcicola – Betula celtiberica – Betula chichibuensis – Betula chinensis – Chinese dwarf birch Betula coriaceifolia – Betula corylifolia – Betula costata – Betula cylindrostachya – Betula dahurica – Betula delavayi – Betula ermanii – Erman's birch Betula falcata – Betula fargesii – Betula fruticosa – Betula globispica – Betula gmelinii – Betula grossa – Japanese cherry birch Betula gynoterminalis – Betula honanensis – Betula humilis or Betula kamtschatica – Kamchatka birch platyphylla Betula insignis – Betula karagandensis – Betula klokovii – Betula kotulae – Betula litvinovii – Betula luminifera – Betula maximowiczii – monarch birch Betula medwediewii – Caucasian birch Betula megrelica – Betula microphylla – Betula nana – dwarf birch ) Betula pendula – silver birch Betula platyphylla – —Siberian silver birch Betula potamophila – Betula potaninii – Betula psammophila – Betula pubescens – downy birch known as white, European white or hairy birch Betula raddeana – Betula saksaren
Fishing
Fishing is the activity of trying to catch fish. Fish are caught in the wild. Techniques for catching fish include hand gathering, netting and trapping. “Fishing” may include catching aquatic animals other than fish, such as molluscs, cephalopods and echinoderms. The term is not applied to catching farmed fish, or to aquatic mammals, such as whales where the term whaling is more appropriate. In addition to being caught to be eaten, fish are caught as recreational pastimes. Fishing tournaments are held, caught fish are sometimes kept as preserved or living trophies; when bioblitzes occur, fish are caught and released. According to the United Nations FAO statistics, the total number of commercial fishermen and fish farmers is estimated to be 38 million. Fisheries and aquaculture provide direct and indirect employment to over 500 million people in developing countries. In 2005, the worldwide per capita consumption of fish captured from wild fisheries was 14.4 kilograms, with an additional 7.4 kilograms harvested from fish farms.
Fishing is an ancient practice that dates back to at least the beginning of the Upper Paleolithic period about 40,000 years ago. Isotopic analysis of the skeletal remains of Tianyuan man, a 40,000-year-old modern human from eastern Asia, has shown that he consumed freshwater fish. Archaeology features such as shell middens, discarded fish bones, cave paintings show that sea foods were important for survival and consumed in significant quantities. Fishing in Africa is evident early on in human history. Neanderthals were fishing by about 200,000 BC to have a source of food for their families and to trade or sell. People could have developed basketry for fish traps, spinning and early forms of knitting in order to make fishing nets to be able to catch more fish in larger quantities. During this period, most people lived a hunter-gatherer lifestyle and were, of necessity on the move. However, where there are early examples of permanent settlements such as those at Lepenski Vir, they are always associated with fishing as a major source of food.
The British dogger was an early type of sailing trawler from the 17th century, but the modern fishing trawler was developed in the 19th century, at the English fishing port of Brixham. By the early 19th century, the fishermen at Brixham needed to expand their fishing area further than before due to the ongoing depletion of stocks, occurring in the overfished waters of South Devon; the Brixham trawler that evolved there was of a sleek build and had a tall gaff rig, which gave the vessel sufficient speed to make long distance trips out to the fishing grounds in the ocean. They were sufficiently robust to be able to tow large trawls in deep water; the great trawling fleet that built up at Brixham, earned the village the title of'Mother of Deep-Sea Fisheries'. This revolutionary design made large scale trawling in the ocean possible for the first time, resulting in a massive migration of fishermen from the ports in the South of England, to villages further north, such as Scarborough, Grimsby and Yarmouth, that were points of access to the large fishing grounds in the Atlantic Ocean.
The small village of Grimsby grew to become the largest fishing port in the world by the mid 19th century. An Act of Parliament was first obtained in 1796, which authorised the construction of new quays and dredging of the Haven to make it deeper, it was only in the 1846, with the tremendous expansion in the fishing industry, that the Grimsby Dock Company was formed. The foundation stone for the Royal Dock was laid by Albert the Prince consort in 1849; the dock covered 25 acres and was formally opened by Queen Victoria in 1854 as the first modern fishing port. The elegant Brixham trawler spread across the world. By the end of the 19th century, there were over 3,000 fishing trawlers in commission in Britain, with 1,000 at Grimsby; these trawlers were sold to fishermen including from the Netherlands and Scandinavia. Twelve trawlers went on to form the nucleus of the German fishing fleet; the earliest steam powered fishing boats first appeared in the 1870s and used the trawl system of fishing as well as lines and drift nets.
These were large boats 80–90 feet in length with a beam of around 20 feet. They travelled at 9 -- 11 knots; the earliest purpose built fishing vessels were designed and made by David Allan in Leith, Scotland in March 1875, when he converted a drifter to steam power. In 1877, he built. Steam trawlers were introduced at Hull in the 1880s. In 1890 it was estimated; the steam drifter was not used in the herring fishery until 1897. The last sailing fishing trawler was built in 1925 in Grimsby. Trawler designs adapted as the way they were powered changed from sail to coal-fired steam by World War I to diesel and turbines by the end of World War II. In 1931, the first powered drum was created by Laurie Jarelainen; the drum was a circular device, set to the side of the boat and would draw in the nets. Since World War II, radio navigation aids and fish finders have been used; the first trawlers fished over the side, rather than over the stern. The first purpose built stern trawler was Fairtry built in 1953 at Scotland.
The ship was much larger than any other trawlers in operation and inaugurated the era of the'super trawler'. As the ship pulled its nets over the stern, it could lift out a much greater haul of up to 60 tons; the ship served as a basis for the expansion of'su
United States
The United States of America known as the United States or America, is a country composed of 50 states, a federal district, five major self-governing territories, various possessions. At 3.8 million square miles, the United States is the world's third or fourth largest country by total area and is smaller than the entire continent of Europe's 3.9 million square miles. With a population of over 327 million people, the U. S. is the third most populous country. The capital is Washington, D. C. and the largest city by population is New York City. Forty-eight states and the capital's federal district are contiguous in North America between Canada and Mexico; the State of Alaska is in the northwest corner of North America, bordered by Canada to the east and across the Bering Strait from Russia to the west. The State of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean; the U. S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea, stretching across nine official time zones. The diverse geography and wildlife of the United States make it one of the world's 17 megadiverse countries.
Paleo-Indians migrated from Siberia to the North American mainland at least 12,000 years ago. European colonization began in the 16th century; the United States emerged from the thirteen British colonies established along the East Coast. Numerous disputes between Great Britain and the colonies following the French and Indian War led to the American Revolution, which began in 1775, the subsequent Declaration of Independence in 1776; the war ended in 1783 with the United States becoming the first country to gain independence from a European power. The current constitution was adopted in 1788, with the first ten amendments, collectively named the Bill of Rights, being ratified in 1791 to guarantee many fundamental civil liberties; the United States embarked on a vigorous expansion across North America throughout the 19th century, acquiring new territories, displacing Native American tribes, admitting new states until it spanned the continent by 1848. During the second half of the 19th century, the Civil War led to the abolition of slavery.
By the end of the century, the United States had extended into the Pacific Ocean, its economy, driven in large part by the Industrial Revolution, began to soar. The Spanish–American War and World War I confirmed the country's status as a global military power; the United States emerged from World War II as a global superpower, the first country to develop nuclear weapons, the only country to use them in warfare, a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council. Sweeping civil rights legislation, notably the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Fair Housing Act of 1968, outlawed discrimination based on race or color. During the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union competed in the Space Race, culminating with the 1969 U. S. Moon landing; the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 left the United States as the world's sole superpower. The United States is the world's oldest surviving federation, it is a representative democracy.
The United States is a founding member of the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Organization of American States, other international organizations. The United States is a developed country, with the world's largest economy by nominal GDP and second-largest economy by PPP, accounting for a quarter of global GDP; the U. S. economy is post-industrial, characterized by the dominance of services and knowledge-based activities, although the manufacturing sector remains the second-largest in the world. The United States is the world's largest importer and the second largest exporter of goods, by value. Although its population is only 4.3% of the world total, the U. S. holds 31% of the total wealth in the world, the largest share of global wealth concentrated in a single country. Despite wide income and wealth disparities, the United States continues to rank high in measures of socioeconomic performance, including average wage, human development, per capita GDP, worker productivity.
The United States is the foremost military power in the world, making up a third of global military spending, is a leading political and scientific force internationally. In 1507, the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller produced a world map on which he named the lands of the Western Hemisphere America in honor of the Italian explorer and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci; the first documentary evidence of the phrase "United States of America" is from a letter dated January 2, 1776, written by Stephen Moylan, Esq. to George Washington's aide-de-camp and Muster-Master General of the Continental Army, Lt. Col. Joseph Reed. Moylan expressed his wish to go "with full and ample powers from the United States of America to Spain" to seek assistance in the revolutionary war effort; the first known publication of the phrase "United States of America" was in an anonymous essay in The Virginia Gazette newspaper in Williamsburg, Virginia, on April 6, 1776. The second draft of the Articles of Confederation, prepared by John Dickinson and completed by June 17, 1776, at the latest, declared "The name of this Confederation shall be the'United States of America'".
The final version of the Articles sent to the states for ratification in late 1777 contains the sentence "The Stile of this Confederacy shall be'The United States of America'". In June 1776, Thomas Jefferson wrote the phrase "UNITED STATES OF AMERICA" in all capitalized letters in the headline of his "original Rough draught" of the Declaration of Independence; this draft of the document did not surface unti
Tsuga canadensis
Tsuga canadensis known as eastern hemlock, eastern hemlock-spruce or Canadian hemlock, in the French-speaking regions of Canada as pruche du Canada, is a coniferous tree native to eastern North America. It is the state tree of Pennsylvania; the eastern hemlock grows well in shade and is long lived, with the oldest recorded specimen, found in Tionesta, being at least 554 years old. The tree reaches heights of about 31 m, but exceptional trees have been recorded up to 53 m; the diameter of the trunk at breast height is 1.5 m, but again, outstanding trees have been recorded up to 1.75 m. The trunk is straight and monopodial, but rarely is forked; the crown is broadly conic, while the brownish bark is scaly and fissured with age. The twigs are a yellow-brown in color with darker red-brown pulvini, are densely pubescent; the buds are ovoid in shape and are small, measuring only 1.5 to 2.5 mm in length. These are not resinous, but may be so; the leaves are 15 to 20 mm in length, but may be as short as 5 mm or as long as 25 mm.
They are flattened and are distichous, or two-ranked. The bottom of the leaf is glaucous with two broad and visible stomatal bands, while the top is a shiny green to yellow-green in color; the leaf margins are slightly toothed near the apex. The seed cones are ovoid in shape and measure 1.5 to 2.5 cm in length and 1.0 to 1.5 cm in width. The scales are ovate to measure 8 to 12 mm in length by 7.0 to 10 mm in width. The apex is more or less rounded and is projected outward. Twenty-four diploid chromosomes are present within the trees' DNA; the wood is soft, coarse-grained, light buff in color. Air-dried, a cubic foot weighs 28 lbs; the lumber is used for general construction and crates. Because of its unusual power of holding spikes, it is used for railroad ties. Untreated, the wood is not durable; as a fuel, it is low in value. The wood is a source of pulp for paper manufacturing. T. canadensis occurs at sea level in the north of its distribution, but is found at elevations of 600–1,800 m. It ranges from northeastern Minnesota eastward through southern Quebec and into Nova Scotia, south in the Appalachian Mountains to northern Georgia and Alabama.
Disjunct populations occur in the southeastern Piedmont, western Ohio and into Illinois, as well as eastern Minnesota. In Canada, it is present in all provinces to the east except Newfoundland and Labrador. In the USA, it is found in all states east of and including Minnesota, Indiana, Kentucky and Alabama, but excluding Florida, its range overlaps that of the related Tsuga caroliniana. It is found on rocky ridges and hillsides with high levels of moisture. Eastern hemlock is confined to areas with cool and humid climates. Precipitation in the areas where it grows is 740 mm to more than 1,270 mm per year; the lower number is more typical of northern forests. Near the Atlantic coast and in the southern Appalachians where the trees reach their greatest heights, annual rainfall exceeds 1,520 mm. In the north of its range, the temperatures in January average −12 °C, while in July they average only 16 °C. In these areas, the frost-free season can last fewer than 80 days. In contrast, the southern end of the range experiences up to 200 days without frost and January temperatures as high as 6 °C.
The species is threatened by the hemlock woolly adelgid, a sap-sucking bug accidentally introduced from East Asia to the United States in 1924, first found in the native range of eastern hemlock in the late 1960s. The adelgid has spread rapidly in southern parts of the range once becoming established, while its expansion northward is much slower. All the hemlocks in the southern Appalachian Mountains have seen infestations of the insect within the last five to seven years, with thousands of hectares of stands dying within the last two to three years. Attempts to save representative examples on both public and private lands are on-going. A project named "Tsuga Search", funded by the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, is being conducted to save the largest and tallest remaining eastern hemlocks in the Park. Through Tsuga Search, hemlocks have been found with trunk volumes up to 44.8 m³ within the park, making it the largest eastern evergreen conifer, eclipsing in volume both eastern white pine and loblolly pine.
The tree is listed as a least concern species in the IUCN Red List, but this is based on its wide distribution and because the adelgid populations have not reached the northern areas of its range. A 2009 study conducted by scientists with the U. S. Forest Service Southern Research Station suggests the hemlock woolly adelgid is killing hemlock trees faster than expected in the southern Appalachians, altering the carbon cycle of these forests. According to Science Daily, the pest could kill most of the region's hemlock trees within the next decade. According to the study, researchers found "hemlock woolly adelgid infestation is impacting the carbon cycle in tree stands," and "adelgid-infested hemlock trees in the South are declining much faster than the reported 9-year decline of some infested hemlock trees in the Northeast." In a 2009 case study, entom
I-80, 
PA 611, Delaware–Lackawanna Railroad
