1.
Aesculus
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The genus Aesculus, with varieties called buckeye and horse chestnut, comprises 13–19 species of flowering plants in the soapberry and lychee family Sapindaceae. They are trees and shrubs native to the temperate Northern Hemisphere, with six species native to North America, Aesculus exhibits a classical arcto-Tertiary distribution. Linnaeus named the genus Aesculus after the Roman name for an edible acorn, common names for these trees include buckeye and horse chestnut. Some are also called white chestnut or red chestnut, in Britain, they are sometimes called conker trees because of their link with the game of conkers, played with the seeds, also called conkers. Aesculus species have stout shoots with resinous, often sticky, buds, opposite, palmately divided leaves, flowers are showy, insect- or bird-pollinated, with four or five petals fused into a lobed corolla tube, arranged in a panicle inflorescence. Flowering starts after 80–110 growing degree days, the fruit matures to a capsule, 2–5 cm diameter, usually globose, containing one to three seeds per capsule. Capsules containing more than one seed result in flatness on one side of the seeds, the point of attachment of the seed in the capsule shows as a large circular whitish scar. The capsule epidermis has spines in some species, while other capsules are warty or smooth, at maturity, the capsule splits into three sections to release the seeds. Aesculus seeds were eaten, after leaching, by the Jōmon people of Japan over about four millennia. All parts of the buckeye or horse chestnut tree are moderately toxic, the toxin affects the gastrointestinal system, causing gastrointestinal disturbances. The USDA notes that the toxicity is due to saponin aescin and glucoside aesculin, native Americans used to crush the seeds and the resulting mash was thrown into still or sluggish waterbodies to stun or kill fish. They then boiled and drained the fish at least three times to dilute the toxins effects, new shoots from the seeds also have been known to kill grazing cattle. The yellow buckeye Aesculus flava is also an ornamental tree with yellow flowers. Among the smaller species, the bottlebrush buckeye Aesculus parviflora also makes a very interesting, interpretations of the tree leaves can be seen in architectural details in the Reims Cathedral. Media related to Aesculus at Wikimedia Commons Data related to Aesculus at Wikispecies Germplasm Resources Information Network, Aesculus Forest, F. Drouin, J. N. Charest, R. Brouillet, a morphological phylogenetic analysis of Aesculus L. and Billia Peyr. Aesculus glabra Kings American Dispensatory Winter ID pictures
2.
Barrington Tops National Park
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The Barrington Tops National Park is a protected national park located in the Hunter Valley, approximately 200 kilometres north of Sydney in New South Wales, Australia. Gazetted in 1969, the 76, 512-hectare park is situated between Scone, Singleton, Dungog, Gloucester and East Gresford. The park is part of the Barrington Tops group World Heritage Site Gondwana Rainforests of Australia inscribed in 1986 and it is also part of the Barrington Tops and Gloucester Tops Important Bird Area. Barrington Tops is part of the Mount Royal Range, a spur of the Great Dividing Range, erosion has weathered the granite and rounded granite boulders can be seen in some areas of the park. Estimates put the age of the rock at 300 to 400 million years, the climate varies from temperate on the lower altitudes to subalpine at highest elevations. A record low of −17 °C has been registered at 1,500 m above sea level. Rainfalls fluctuate between 750 millimetres in the northwest to more than 2,000 mm in the southeast, the ecology of the national park varies from subtropical rainforests in the gullies to subalpine and alpine regions on the mountain peaks. Snow usually falls on the mountain every year and occasionally snows enough to close roads. Rainfall can exceed 1,500 mm per annum, a large variety of plants and animals reside in the park and the steepness of the terrain ensures that they are not disturbed by humans. The remoteness and inaccessibility of a part of the park has allowed some of the more sensitive animals to remain largely undisturbed. A large number of fauna have been catalogued in the park including some that were thought to be extinct. Some of the common animals include, barking and sooty owls, eastern grey kangaroos, frogs, pademelons, cockatoos, rosellas, kookaburras, bats. It supports an important population of rufous scrub-birds, as well as flame robins, pale-yellow robins, paradise riflebirds, green catbirds, regent bowerbirds. Animals such as quolls, native rats and platypus are reclusive, not all of the animals in the park are desirable, introduced species such as feral horses and feral cats are being removed. The traditional owners of the area are the people of Australia, known as Australian Aborigines, and include the Gringai clan, the Wonnarua people. In 1969 the area between Mount Barrington, Mount Royal and the Gloucester Tops was declared the Barrington Tops National Park, in 1982 it was listed as a World Heritage Area and subsequently a Wilderness Area. Some of the rivers flowing through the Barrington range have been classed as wild rivers meaning they are exceptionally pure, the highest peak is Brumlow Top which rises to a height of 1,586 metres. A number of aircraft have crashed in and around the Barrington Tops, the altitude, frequent fog & cloud, storms and cold weather make this area potentially hazardous to aircraft
3.
Australia
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Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania and numerous smaller islands. It is the worlds sixth-largest country by total area, the neighbouring countries are Papua New Guinea, Indonesia and East Timor to the north, the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu to the north-east, and New Zealand to the south-east. Australias capital is Canberra, and its largest urban area is Sydney, for about 50,000 years before the first British settlement in the late 18th century, Australia was inhabited by indigenous Australians, who spoke languages classifiable into roughly 250 groups. The population grew steadily in subsequent decades, and by the 1850s most of the continent had been explored, on 1 January 1901, the six colonies federated, forming the Commonwealth of Australia. Australia has since maintained a liberal democratic political system that functions as a federal parliamentary constitutional monarchy comprising six states. The population of 24 million is highly urbanised and heavily concentrated on the eastern seaboard, Australia has the worlds 13th-largest economy and ninth-highest per capita income. With the second-highest human development index globally, the country highly in quality of life, health, education, economic freedom. The name Australia is derived from the Latin Terra Australis a name used for putative lands in the southern hemisphere since ancient times, the Dutch adjectival form Australische was used in a Dutch book in Batavia in 1638, to refer to the newly discovered lands to the south. On 12 December 1817, Macquarie recommended to the Colonial Office that it be formally adopted, in 1824, the Admiralty agreed that the continent should be known officially as Australia. The first official published use of the term Australia came with the 1830 publication of The Australia Directory and these first inhabitants may have been ancestors of modern Indigenous Australians. The Torres Strait Islanders, ethnically Melanesian, were originally horticulturists, the northern coasts and waters of Australia were visited sporadically by fishermen from Maritime Southeast Asia. The first recorded European sighting of the Australian mainland, and the first recorded European landfall on the Australian continent, are attributed to the Dutch. The first ship and crew to chart the Australian coast and meet with Aboriginal people was the Duyfken captained by Dutch navigator, Willem Janszoon. He sighted the coast of Cape York Peninsula in early 1606, the Dutch charted the whole of the western and northern coastlines and named the island continent New Holland during the 17th century, but made no attempt at settlement. William Dampier, an English explorer and privateer, landed on the north-west coast of New Holland in 1688, in 1770, James Cook sailed along and mapped the east coast, which he named New South Wales and claimed for Great Britain. The first settlement led to the foundation of Sydney, and the exploration, a British settlement was established in Van Diemens Land, now known as Tasmania, in 1803, and it became a separate colony in 1825. The United Kingdom formally claimed the part of Western Australia in 1828. Separate colonies were carved from parts of New South Wales, South Australia in 1836, Victoria in 1851, the Northern Territory was founded in 1911 when it was excised from South Australia
4.
Leaf
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A leaf is an organ of a vascular plant and is the principal lateral appendage of the stem. The leaves and stem together form the shoot, Leaves are collectively referred to as foliage, as in autumn foliage. Although leaves can be seen in different shapes, sizes and textures, typically a leaf is a thin, dorsiventrally flattened organ, borne above ground. Most leaves have distinctive upper surface and lower surface that differ in colour, hairiness, broad, flat leaves with complex venation are known as megaphylls and the species that bear them, the majority, as broad-leaved or megaphyllous plants. In others, such as the clubmosses, with different evolutionary origins, some leaves, such as bulb scales are not above ground, and in many aquatic species the leaves are submerged in water. Succulent plants often have thick juicy leaves, but some leaves are without major photosynthetic function and may be dead at maturity, as in some cataphylls, furthermore, several kinds of leaf-like structures found in vascular plants are not totally homologous with them. Examples include flattened plant stems called phylloclades and cladodes, and flattened leaf stems called phyllodes which differ from both in their structure and origin. Many structures of plants, such as the phyllids of mosses and liverworts and even of some foliose lichens. Leaves are the most important organs of most vascular plants and these are then further processed by chemical synthesis into more complex organic molecules such as cellulose, the basic structural material in plant cell walls. The plant must therefore bring these three together in the leaf for photosynthesis to take place. Once sugar has been synthesized, it needs to be transported to areas of growth such as the plant shoots and roots. Vascular plants transport sucrose in a tissue called the phloem. The phloem and xylem are parallel to each other but the transport of materials is usually in opposite directions. Within the leaf these vascular systems branch to form veins which supply as much as the leaf as possible and they are arranged on the plant so as to expose their surfaces to light as efficiently as possible without shading each other, but there are many exceptions and complications. For instance plants adapted to windy conditions may have pendent leaves, such as in many willows, the flat, or laminar, shape also maximises thermal contact with the surrounding air, promoting cooling. Functionally, in addition to photosynthesis the leaf is the site of transpiration and guttation. Many gymnosperms have thin needle-like or scale-like leaves that can be advantageous in cold climates with frequent snow and these are interpreted as reduced from megaphyllous leaves of their Devonian ancestors. For xerophytes the major constraint is not light flux or intensity, some window plants such as Fenestraria species and some Haworthia species such as Haworthia tesselata and Haworthia truncata are examples of xerophytes. and Bulbine mesembryanthemoides
5.
Moth
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Moths comprise a group of insects related to butterflies, belonging to the order Lepidoptera. Most lepidopterans are moths, and there are thought to be approximately 160,000 species of moth, most species of moth are nocturnal, but there are also crepuscular and diurnal species. While the butterflies form a group, the moths, comprising the rest of the Lepidoptera. Moth antennae can be varied in appearance, but in particular lack the club end. The divisions are named by this principle, club-antennae or varied-antennae, the modern English word moth comes from Old English moððe from Common Germanic. Moth larvae, or caterpillars, make cocoons from which emerge as fully grown moths with wings. Some moth caterpillars dig holes in the ground, where they live until they are ready to turn into adult moths, moths evolved long before butterflies, fossils having been found that may be 190 million years old. Both types of lepidoptera are thought to have evolved along with flowering plants, mainly because most modern species feed on flowering plants, one of the earliest species thought to be a moth-ancestor is Archaeolepis mane, whose fossil fragments show scaled wings similar to caddisflies in their veining. Some moths, particularly their caterpillars, can be agricultural pests in many parts of the world. Examples include corn borers and bollworms, the caterpillar of the gypsy moth causes severe damage to forests in the northeastern United States, where it is an invasive species. In temperate climates, the codling moth causes extensive damage, especially to fruit farms, in tropical and subtropical climates, the diamondback moth is perhaps the most serious pest of brassicaceous crops. Several moths in the family Tineidae are commonly regarded as pests because their larvae eat fabric such as clothes and they are less likely to eat mixed materials containing some artificial fibers. There are some reports that they may be repelled by the scent of wood from juniper and cedar, by lavender, or by natural oils, however. Naphthalene is considered effective, but there are concerns over its effects on human health. Moth larvae may be killed by freezing the items which they infest for several days at a temperature below −8 °C, despite being notorious for eating clothing, most moth adults do not eat at all. Many, like the Luna, Polyphemus, Atlas, Promethea, cecropia, among those adult moths that do eat, they will drink nectar. Some moths are farmed for their economic value, the most notable of these is the silkworm, the larva of the domesticated moth Bombyx mori. It is farmed for the silk with which it builds its cocoon, as of 2002, the silk industry produces more than 130 million kilograms of raw silk, worth about 250 million U. S. dollars, each year
6.
Lepidoptera
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The Lepidoptera is an order of insects that includes moths and butterflies. 180,000 species of Lepidoptera are described, in 126 families and 46 superfamilies and it is one of the most widespread and widely recognizable insect orders in the world. The term was coined by Linnaeus in 1735 and is derived from Ancient Greek λεπίδος, the Lepidoptera show many variations of the basic body structure that have evolved to gain advantages in lifestyle and distribution. Recent estimates suggest the order may have more species than earlier thought, and is among the four most speciose orders, along with the Hymenoptera, Diptera, and Coleoptera. Lepidopteran species are characterized by more than three derived features, some of the most apparent being the scales covering their bodies and wings, the scales are modified, flattened hairs, and give butterflies and moths their extraordinary variety of colors and patterns. Almost all species have some form of wings, except for a few that have reduced wings or are wingless. Like most other insects, butterflies and moths are holometabolous, meaning they undergo complete metamorphosis, mating and the laying of eggs are carried out by adults, normally near or on host plants for the larvae. As they grow, these change in appearance, going through a series of stages called instars. Once fully matured, the larva develops into a pupa A few butterflies and many species spin a silk case or cocoon prior to pupating, while others do not. A butterfly pupa, called a chrysalis, has a hard skin, once the pupa has completed its metamorphosis, a sexually mature adult emerges. Accordingly, this is the most recognized and popular of insect orders with many involved in the observation, study, collection, rearing of. A person who collects or studies this order is referred to as a lepidopterist, in many species, the female may produce from 200 to 600 eggs, while in others, the number may approach 30,000 eggs in one day. The caterpillars hatching from eggs can cause damage to large quantities of crops. Many moth and butterfly species are of economic interest by virtue of their role as pollinators, the word Lepidoptera comes from the Latin word for scaly wing, from the Ancient Greek λεπίς meaning scale and πτερόν meaning wing. The origins of the common names butterfly and moth are varied, the English word butterfly is from Old English buttorfleoge, with many variations in spelling. Other than that, the origin is unknown, although it could be derived from the yellow color of many species wings suggesting the color of butter. The species of Heterocera are commonly called moths, the origins of the English word moth are more clear, deriving from the Old English moððe from Common Germanic. The Lepidoptera are among the most successful groups of insects, among the most northern dwelling species of butterflies and moths is the Arctic Apollo, which is found in the Arctic Circle in northeastern Yakutia, at an altitude of 1500 m above sea level
7.
Sawfly
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Sawflies are the insects of the suborder Symphyta within the order Hymenoptera alongside ants, bees and wasps. The common name comes from the appearance of the ovipositor. The suborder Symphyta is paraphyletic, consisting of several groups within the order Hymenoptera. Some sawflies are Batesian mimics of wasps and bees, and the ovipositor can be mistaken for a stinger, Sawflies vary in length, most measuring 2.5 millimetres to 20 millimetres, the largest known sawfly measured 55 millimetres. The larvae are caterpillar-like, but can be distinguished by the number of prolegs, the great majority of sawflies are plant-eating, though the members of the superfamily Orussoidea are parasitic. The adults feed on pollen and nectar, predators include birds, insects and small animals. The larvae of species have anti-predator adaptations such as regurgitating irritating liquid. Sawflies are hosts to many parasitoids, most of which are Hymenoptera, adult sawflies are short-lived, with a life expectancy of 7–9 days, though the larval stage can last from months to years, depending on the species. Parthenogenetic females, which do not need to mate to produce fertilised eggs, are common in the suborder, Sawflies go through a complete metamorphosis with four distinct life stages – egg, larva, pupa and adult. The female uses her ovipositor to drill into plant material and then lays eggs in groups called rafts or pods, after hatching, larvae feed on plants, often in groups. As they approach adulthood, the larvae seek a spot to pupate. Large populations of such as the pine sawfly can cause substantial damage to economic forestry. Outbreaks of sawfly larvae can defoliate trees and may cause dieback, Sawflies can be controlled through the use of insecticides, natural predators and parasites, or mechanical methods. Sawflies first appeared 250 million years ago in the Triassic, the oldest superfamily, the Xyeloidea, has existed into the present. Sawflies are distributed globally, though they are diverse in the northern hemisphere. The suborder name Symphyta derives from the Greek word symphyton, meaning grown together and its common name, sawfly, derives from the saw-like ovipositor that is used for egg-laying, in which a female makes a slit in either a stem or plant leaf to deposit the eggs. The first known use of name was in 1773. Sawflies are also known as wood-wasps, in his original description of Hymenoptera in 1863, German zoologist Carl Gerstäcker divided them into three groups, Hymenoptera aculeata, Hymenoptera apocrita and Hymenoptera phytophaga
8.
Wasp
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A wasp is any insect of the order Hymenoptera and suborder Apocrita that is neither a bee nor an ant. The Apocrita have an evolutionary ancestor and form a clade, wasps as a group do not form a clade. The most commonly known wasps, such as jackets and hornets, are in the family Vespidae and are eusocial, living together in a nest with an egg-laying queen. Eusociality is favoured by the unusual system of sex determination in Hymenoptera. However, the majority of species are solitary, with each adult female living and breeding independently. Many of the wasps are parasitoidal, meaning that they raise their young by laying eggs on or in other insects. Unlike true parasites, the larvae eventually kill their hosts. Solitary wasps parasitize almost every pest insect, making wasps valuable in horticulture for biological pest control of such as whitefly in tomatoes. Wasps first appeared in the record in the Jurassic. They are a successful and diverse group of insects with tens of thousands of described species, the largest social wasp is the Asian giant hornet, at up to 5 centimetres in length, among the largest solitary wasps is the giant scoliid of Indonesia, Megascolia procer. Some are predators, whether to feed themselves or to provision their nests, many, notably the cuckoo wasps, are kleptoparasites, laying eggs in the nests of other wasps. The name Wasp has been used for warships and other military equipment. The wasps are a paraphyletic grouping of hundreds of thousands of species, consisting of the narrow-waisted Apocrita without the ants. The Hymenoptera also contain the somewhat wasplike but unwaisted Symphyta, the sawflies, Hymenoptera in the form of Symphyta first appeared in the fossil record in the Lower Triassic. Apocrita, wasps in the sense, appeared in the Jurassic. Fig wasps with modern features first appeared in the Lower Cretaceous of the Crato Formation in Brazil. The Vespidae include the extinct genus Palaeovespa, seven species of which are known from the Eocene rocks of the Florissant fossil beds of Colorado, also found in Baltic amber are crown wasps of the genus Electrostephanus. Wasps are a group, estimated at over a hundred thousand described species around the world
9.
Fly
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True flies are insects of the order Diptera, the name being derived from the Greek di = two, and ptera = wings. Insects of this use only a single pair of wings to fly. Diptera is an order containing an estimated 1,000,000 species including horse-flies, crane flies, hoverflies and others. Flies have a head, with a pair of large compound eyes. Their wing arrangement gives them great manoeuvrability in flight, and claws, Flies undergo complete metamorphosis, the eggs are laid on the larval food-source and the larvae, which lack true limbs, develop in a protected environment, often inside their source of their food. The pupa is a capsule from which the adult emerges when ready to do so. Diptera is one of the insect orders and are of considerable ecological. Flies are important pollinators, second only to the bees and their Hymenopteran relatives, Flies may have been among the evolutionarily earliest pollinators responsible for early plant pollination. Flies can be annoyances especially in parts of the world where they can occur in large numbers. Larger flies such as flies and screwworms cause significant economic harm to cattle. Blowfly larvae, known as gentles, and other larvae, known more generally as maggots, are used as fishing bait. They are also used in medicine in debridement to clean wounds, dipterans are endopterygotes, insects that undergo radical metamorphosis. They belong to the Mecopterida, alongside the Mecoptera, Siphonaptera, Lepidoptera and Trichoptera, the possession of a single pair of wings distinguishes most true flies from other insects with fly in their names. However, some true flies such as Hippoboscidae have become secondarily wingless and this cladogram represents the current consensus view. The first true dipterans known are from the Middle Triassic, and they became widespread during the Middle, modern flowering plants did not appear until the Cretaceous, so the original dipterans must have had a different source of nutrition other than nectar. The basal clades in the Diptera include the Deuterophlebiidae and the enigmatic Nymphomyiidae, three episodes of evolutionary radiation are thought to have occurred based on the fossil record. Many new species of lower Diptera developed in the Triassic, about 220 million years ago, many lower Brachycera appeared in the Jurassic, some 180 million years ago. A third radiation took place among the Schizophora at the start of the Paleogene,66 million years ago, the phylogenetic position of Diptera has been controversial
10.
Predation
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In an ecosystem, predation is a biological interaction where a predator feeds on its prey. Predators may or may not kill their prey prior to feeding on it, but the act of predation often results in the death of the prey, thus predation is often, though not always, carnivory. Other categories of consumption are herbivory, fungivory, and detritivory, all of these are consumer-resource systems. It can often be difficult to separate various types of feeding behaviors. For example, some parasites prey on their host and then lay their eggs on it, for their offspring to feed on it while it continues to live, the key characteristic of predation is the predators direct impact on the prey population. Selective pressures imposed on one another leads to an evolutionary arms race between prey and predator, resulting in various antipredator adaptations. Ways of classifying predation include grouping by trophic level or diet, by specialization, Predators can be classified by their interactions with their prey. Two factors are considered here, how close the predator and prey are, and whether the prey is killed by the predator. A true predator is one that kills and eats another living thing, Predators may hunt actively for prey in pursuit predation, or sit and wait for prey to approach within striking distance, as in ambush predators. Some predation entails venom that subdues a prey before the predator ingests it, as in the box jellyfish, or disables it, in some cases, the venom contributes to the digestion of the prey, as in rattlesnakes and some spiders. In contrast, baleen whales eat millions of microscopic plankton at once, seed and egg predation are true predation, as seeds and eggs are potential organisms. Predators need not eat prey entirely, for example, some predators cannot digest bones, some may eat only part of an organism, but still consistently cause its death. Grazing organisms do not often kill their prey, while some herbivores like zooplankton live on unicellular phytoplankton and therefore, by the individualized nature of the organism, kill their prey, many others only eat a small part of the plant. Grazing livestock may pull some grass out at the roots, but most is simply grazed upon, kelp is frequently grazed in subtidal kelp forests, but regrows at the base of the blade continuously to cope with browsing pressure. Animals may also be grazed upon, female mosquitos land on hosts briefly to gain sufficient proteins for the development of their offspring, starfish may be grazed on, being capable of regenerating lost arms. Parasites can at times be difficult to distinguish from grazers and their feeding behavior is similar in many ways, however they are noted for their close association with their host species. This close living arrangement may be described by the symbiosis, living together. Parasitic organisms range from the mistletoe, a parasitic plant
11.
Quercus robur
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Quercus robur, commonly known as pedunculate oak or English oak, is a species of flowering plant in the beech and oak family Fagaceae. It is native to most of Europe west of the Caucasus, the tree is widely cultivated in temperate regions and has escaped into the wild in scattered parts of China and North America. Quercus robur is the species of the genus, and a member of the white oak section Quercus section Quercus. The populations in Italy, southeast Europe, and Asia Minor, a close relative is the sessile oak, which shares much of its range. Q. robur is distinguished from this species by its leaves having only a short stalk 3–8 mm long. The two often hybridise in the wild, the hybrid being known as Quercus × rosacea, Q. robur should not be confused with Q. rubra, the red oak, which is a native of North America and only distantly related. Quercus robur is a deciduous tree, with circumference of grand oaks from 4 m to exceptional 12 m. The Majesty Oak with a circumference of 12.2 m is the thickest tree in Great Britain, Quercus robur has lobed and nearly sessile leaves 7–14 cm long. Flowering takes place in mid spring, and their fruit, called acorns, the acorns are 2–2.5 cm long, pedunculate with one to four acorns on each peduncle. Q. robur is very tolerant to soil conditions and the climate but it prefers fertile. It is a tree, with a large wide spreading crown of rugged branches. While it may live to an age of a few centuries, many of the oldest trees are pollarded or coppiced. Yet another can be found in Kvilleken, Sweden, that is over 1,000 years old and 14 metres around, of maiden specimens, one of the oldest is the great oak of Ivenack, Germany. Tree-ring research of this tree and other oaks nearby gives an age of 700 to 800 years. Also the Bowthorpe Oak in Lincolnshire, England is estimated to be 1,000 years old, making it the oldest in the UK, highest density of the grand oak trees Q. robur with a circumference 4 metres and more is in Latvia. Within its native range Q. robur is valued for its importance to insects, numerous insects live on the leaves, buds, and in the acorns. Q. robur supports the highest biodiversity of insect herbivores of any British plant, the acorns form a valuable food resource for several small mammals and some birds, notably Eurasian jays Garrulus glandarius. Mammals, notably squirrels who tend to hoard acorns and other nuts most often leave them too abused to grow in the action of moving or storing them
12.
Tree
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In botany, a tree is a perennial plant with an elongated stem, or trunk, supporting branches and leaves in most species. In some usages, the definition of a tree may be narrower, including only woody plants with secondary growth, plants that are usable as lumber or plants above a specified height. Trees are not a group but include a variety of plant species that have independently evolved a woody trunk. In looser senses, the palms, the tree ferns, bananas. Trees tend to be long-lived, some reaching several thousand years old, the tallest known tree, a coast redwood named Hyperion, stands 115.6 m high. Trees have been in existence for 370 million years and it is estimated that there are just over 3 trillion mature trees in the world. A tree typically has many secondary branches supported clear of the ground by the trunk and this trunk typically contains woody tissue for strength, and vascular tissue to carry materials from one part of the tree to another. For most trees it is surrounded by a layer of bark which serves as a protective barrier, below the ground, the roots branch and spread out widely, they serve to anchor the tree and extract moisture and nutrients from the soil. Above ground, the divide into smaller branches and shoots. The shoots typically bear leaves, which light energy and convert it into sugars by photosynthesis, providing the food for the trees growth. Flowers and fruit may also be present, but some trees, such as conifers, instead have pollen cones and seed cones, others, such as tree ferns, trees play a significant role in reducing erosion and moderating the climate. They remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and store large quantities of carbon in their tissues, trees and forests provide a habitat for many species of animals and plants. Tropical rainforests are one of the most biodiverse habitats in the world, trees provide shade and shelter, timber for construction, fuel for cooking and heating, and fruit for food as well as having many other uses. In parts of the world, forests are shrinking as trees are cleared to increase the amount of available for agriculture. Because of their longevity and usefulness, trees have always revered, with sacred groves in various cultures. Although tree is a term of common parlance, there is no universally recognised precise definition of what a tree is, either botanically or in common language. In its broadest sense, a tree is any plant with the form of an elongated stem, or trunk. Trees are also defined by height, with smaller plants from 0.5 to 10 m being called shrubs
