1.
Gippsland
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Gippsland is an economic rural region of Victoria, Australia, located in the south-eastern part of that state. Gippsland is generally broken down into the East Gippsland, South Gippsland, West Gippsland, the area was originally inhabited by Indigenous Australians of the Gunai nation and part of West Gippsland by the Bunurong nation. Before permanent European settlement, the area was visited by sealers and wattle bark gatherers and his business partner Robert Massie joined him in 1837. Both had worked for the Van Diemens Land Company at Circular Head, samuels brothers Hugh and Thomas arrived at Bass shortly after, where they established a successful farming venture. Further European settlement followed two separate expeditions to the area, angus McMillan led the first European expedition between 1839 and 1840, naming the area Caledonia Australis. Following these expeditions, the area was officially named Gippsland, a chosen by Strzelecki in honour of the New South Wales Governor, George Gipps. The township of Bass was surveyed and settled in the early 1860s, Gippsland is traditionally subdivided into four or five main sub–regions or districts, West Gippsland South Gippsland the Latrobe Valley East Gippsland. Sometimes a fifth region, Central Gippsland, is added to refer to the zone between the Gippsland Lakes and Yarram. The climate of Gippsland is temperate and generally humid, except in the region around Sale. In the Strzelecki Ranges annual rainfall can be as high as 1,500 millimetres, in lower levels east of the Snowy River, mean annual rainfall is typically about 900–950 millimetres and less variable than in the coastal districts of New South Wales. Mean maximum temperatures in lower areas range from 24 °C in January to 15 °C in July, in the highlands of the Baw Baw Plateau and the remote Errinundra Plateau, temperatures range from a maximum of 18 °C to a minimum of 8 °C. However, in winter, mean minima in these areas can be as low as −4 °C, the soils in Gippsland are generally very infertile, being profoundly deficient in nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium and calcium. Apart from frequently flooded areas, they are classed as Spodosols, Psamments, consequently, heavy fertilisation is required for agriculture or pastoral development. Despite this, parts of Gippsland have become highly productive dairying and vegetable-growing regions, a few alluvial soils have much better native fertility, and these have always been intensively cultivated. In the extreme northeast is a section of the Monaro Tableland used for grazing beef cattle. Gippsland possesses very few deposits of metallic minerals, however, the deep underground gold mines operated at Walhalla for a fifty-year period between 1863-1913. Like the rest of Australia, the seas around Gippsland are of low productivity as there is no upwelling due to the warm currents in the Tasman Sea. Nonetheless, towns such as Marlo and Mallacoota depended for a time on the fishing of abalone, whose shells could fetch very high prices because of their use for pearls
2.
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
3.
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
4.
Leptosporangiate fern
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Leptosporangiate ferns are the largest group of living ferns, including some 11000 species worldwide. They constitute the subclass Polypodiidae, but are considered to be the class Pteridopsida or Polypodiopsida. There are approximately 8465 species of living ferns, compared with about 2070 for all other ferns. Almost a third of leptosporangiate fern species are epiphytes and these ferns are called leptosporangiate because their sporangia arise from a single epidermal cell and not from a group of cells as in eusporangiate ferns. The sporangia are typically covered with a called the indusium. Many leptosporangiate ferns have an annulus around the sporangium, which ejects the spores, leptosporangiates include the vast majority of extant ferns. Only groups that branched off early from the lineage, which retain a eusporangium, are not included. Multiple attempts have been made to classify ferns, the classification scheme proposed by Smith et al.2006 is the most widely accepted. More recent analyses by and Christenhusz et al.2011 and Christenhusz & Chase 2014 offer additional insight into the group and it was formerly unclear about the relationship between Equisetopsida, Psilotopsida, and Marattiopsida, but recent studies have shown that Equisetopsida is most likely sister to Psilotopsida. There has been some challenge to recent molecular studies, claiming that these provide a view of the phylogenetic order because they do not take into account fossil representatives
5.
Cyatheales
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The order Cyatheales, which includes the tree ferns, is a taxonomic division of the fern class, Polypodiopsida. No clear morphological features characterize all of the Cyatheales, but DNA sequence data indicate the order is monophyletic, some species in the Cyatheales have tree-like growth forms, but others have rhizomes. Some species have scales on the stems and leaves, while others have hairs, however, most plants in the Cyatheales are tree ferns and have trunk-like stems up to 10 metres tall. It is unclear how many times the form has evolved. In general, any fern that grows with a trunk elevating the fronds above ground level can be called a tree fern, however, the plants formally known as tree ferns comprise a group of large ferns belonging to the families Dicksoniaceae and Cyatheaceae in the order Cyatheales. Like all ferns, tree ferns reproduce by means of spores developed in sporangia on the undersides of the fronds, the fronds of tree ferns are usually very large and multiple-pinnated, but at least one type has entire fronds. The fronds of tree ferns also exhibit circinate vernation, meaning the young emerge in coils that uncurl as they grow. Unlike flowering plants, tree ferns do not form new tissue in their trunk as they grow. Rather, the trunk is supported by a mass of roots that expands as the tree fern grows. Some genera — for example Dicksonia and Cibotium, and some Cyathea — can be transplanted by severing the top portion from the rest of the trunk, if the transplanted top part is kept moist it will regrow a new root system over the next year. The success rate of transplantation increases if the roots are dug up intact, if the crown of the Tasmanian tree fern Dicksonia antarctica is damaged, it will die because all new growth occurs there. But other clump-forming tree fern species, such as D. squarrosa and D. youngiae, Tree ferns often fall over in the wild, yet manage to reroot from this new prostrate position and begin new vertical growth. The number of tree species is likely to be around a thousand. While many ferns are able to achieve a widespread distribution because of their spore reproduction and this makes their species much more susceptible to the effects of local deforestation. Why species are not more widespread is unknown, especially considering they have sufficient height to have a chance of getting spores into the wind stream. Where feral pigs are a problem, as in some Hawaiian rainforests, they knock over tree ferns to root out the starchy pith. Outside of the Cyatheales a few ferns in other groups could be considered tree ferns, a few species in the genera Blechnum, Leptopteris, Sadleria and Todea could also be considered tree ferns in a liberal interpretation of the term. In the molecular phylogenetic classification of Smith et al. in 2006, eight families, Thyrsopteridaceae, Loxsomataceae, Culcitaceae, Plagiogyriaceae, Cibotiaceae, Cyatheaceae, Dicksoniaceae, and Metaxyaceae, were recognized
6.
Dicksoniaceae
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The Dicksoniaceae is a family of tropical, subtropical and warm temperate ferns. Most of the 5-6 genera in the family are terrestrial ferns or have very short compared to tree ferns of the family Cyatheaceae. However, some of the species can reach several metres in height. A number of others are epiphytes and they are found mostly in tropical regions in the Southern Hemisphere, as far south as southern New Zealand. Species in the family are characterized by large pinnate fronds. The family includes species of tree ferns, which grow a single trunk. All members of the family have long, tapering hairs composed of cells arranged end to end, the ferns of family Dicksoniaceae are generally regarded as more primitive than those of the family Cyatheaceae, having originated in the early Jurassic period. Only 3 extant genera are recognised in this family, Calochlaena Dicksonia Lophosoria Cyatheales Classification of Ferns and Allies Large. Pryer, E. Schuettpelz, P. Korall, H. Schneider & P. G. Wolf 2006, archived from the original on 2008-02-26
7.
Dicksonia
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Dicksonia is a genus of tree ferns in the order Cyatheales. It is regarded as related to Cyathea, but is considered primitive, dating back at least to the Jurassic. The fossil record includes stems, pinnules, and spores, the genus contains 20-25 species, distributed from Mexico to Argentina, Uruguay and Chile, St. Helena, New Zealand, New Caledonia, Australia, Indonesia, New Guinea, and the Philippines. New Guinea has the greatest diversity, with five species, an easily cultivated species of Dicksonia is D. antarctica, the soft tree fern. The genus was first described by Charles Louis LHéritier de Brutelle in 1788, the name honors James Dickson, a prominent nurseryman and botanist. Dicksonia antarctica, Soft Tree Fern, Tasmanian Tree Fern, Dicksonia grandis, New Guinea Dicksonia herbertii, Northeastern Queensland, Australia Dicksonia hieronymi, New Guinea. Southern Mexico through Central America and Northern South America to Bolivia, Dicksonia squarrosa, Rough Tree Fern, Slender Tree Fern, New Zealand Tree Fern, Wheki. Large, M. F. and J. E. Braggins Tree Ferns, list of the American Dicksonia Species. Scientific Authority of Germany, Bonn 2001, community, Care and propagation of Tree ferns Fern Files, Dicksonia LHéritiers original diagnosis of the genus online on Project Gutenberg
8.
Binomial nomenclature
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Such a name is called a binomial name, a binomen, binominal name or a scientific name, more informally it is also called a Latin name. The first part of the name identifies the genus to which the species belongs, for example, humans belong to the genus Homo and within this genus to the species Homo sapiens. The formal introduction of system of naming species is credited to Carl Linnaeus. But Gaspard Bauhin, in as early as 1623, had introduced in his book Pinax theatri botanici many names of genera that were adopted by Linnaeus. Although the general principles underlying binomial nomenclature are common to these two codes, there are differences, both in the terminology they use and in their precise rules. Similarly, both parts are italicized when a binomial name occurs in normal text, thus the binomial name of the annual phlox is now written as Phlox drummondii. In scientific works, the authority for a name is usually given, at least when it is first mentioned. In zoology Patella vulgata Linnaeus,1758, the original name given by Linnaeus was Fringilla domestica, the parentheses indicate that the species is now considered to belong in a different genus. The ICZN does not require that the name of the person who changed the genus be given, nor the date on which the change was made, in botany Amaranthus retroflexus L. – L. is the standard abbreviation used in botany for Linnaeus. – Linnaeus first named this bluebell species Scilla italica, Rothmaler transferred it to the genus Hyacinthoides, the ICN does not require that the dates of either publication be specified. Prior to the adoption of the binomial system of naming species. Together they formed a system of polynomial nomenclature and these names had two separate functions. First, to designate or label the species, and second, to be a diagnosis or description, such polynomial names may sometimes look like binomials, but are significantly different. For example, Gerards herbal describes various kinds of spiderwort, The first is called Phalangium ramosum, Branched Spiderwort, is aptly termed Phalangium Ephemerum Virginianum, Soon-Fading Spiderwort of Virginia. The Latin phrases are short descriptions, rather than identifying labels, the Bauhins, in particular Caspar Bauhin, took some important steps towards the binomial system, by pruning the Latin descriptions, in many cases to two words. The adoption by biologists of a system of binomial nomenclature is due to Swedish botanist and physician Carl von Linné. It was in his 1753 Species Plantarum that he first began using a one-word trivial name together with a generic name in a system of binomial nomenclature. This trivial name is what is now known as an epithet or specific name
