Pine
A pine is any conifer in the genus Pinus of the family Pinaceae. Pinus is the sole genus in the subfamily Pinoideae; the Plant List compiled by the Royal Botanic Gardens and Missouri Botanical Garden accepts 126 species names of pines as current, together with 35 unresolved species and many more synonyms. The modern English name "pine" derives from Latin pinus, which some have traced to the Indo-European base *pīt- ‘resin’. Before the 19th century, pines were referred to as firs. In some European languages, Germanic cognates of the Old Norse name are still in use for pines—in Danish fyr, in Norwegian fura/fure/furu, Swedish fura/furu, Dutch vuren, German Föhre—but in modern English, fir is now restricted to fir and Douglas fir. Pine trees are evergreen, coniferous resinous trees growing 3–80 m tall, with the majority of species reaching 15–45 m tall; the smallest are Siberian dwarf pine and Potosi pinyon, the tallest is an 81.79 m tall ponderosa pine located in southern Oregon's Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest.
Pines are long lived and reach ages of 100–1,000 years, some more. The longest-lived is Pinus longaeva. One individual of this species, dubbed "Methuselah", is one of the world's oldest living organisms at around 4,600 years old; this tree can be found in the White Mountains of California. An older tree, now cut down, was dated at 4,900 years old, it was discovered in a grove beneath Wheeler Peak and it is now known as "Prometheus" after the Greek immortal. The bark of most pines is thick and scaly; the branches are produced in regular "pseudo whorls" a tight spiral but appearing like a ring of branches arising from the same point. Many pines are uninodal, producing just one such whorl of branches each year, from buds at the tip of the year's new shoot, but others are multinodal, producing two or more whorls of branches per year; the spiral growth of branches and cone scales may be arranged in Fibonacci number ratios. The new spring shoots are sometimes called "candles"; these "candles" offer foresters a means to evaluate fertility of the vigour of the trees.
Pines have four types of leaf: Seed leaves on seedlings are borne in a whorl of 4–24. Juvenile leaves, which follow on seedlings and young plants, are 2–6 cm long, green or blue-green, arranged spirally on the shoot; these are produced for six months to five years longer. Scale leaves, similar to bud scales, are small and not photosynthetic, arranged spirally like the juvenile leaves. Needles, the adult leaves, are green and bundled in clusters called fascicles; the needles can number from one to seven per fascicle, but number from two to five. Each fascicle is produced from a small bud on a dwarf shoot in the axil of a scale leaf; these bud scales remain on the fascicle as a basal sheath. The needles persist depending on species. If a shoot is damaged, the needle fascicles just below the damage will generate a bud which can replace the lost leaves. Pines are monoecious, having the male and female cones on the same tree, though a few species are sub-dioecious, with individuals predominantly, but not wholly, single-sex.
The male cones are small 1–5 cm long, only present for a short period, falling as soon as they have shed their pollen. The female cones take 1.5–3 years to mature after pollination, with actual fertilization delayed one year. At maturity the female cones are 3–60 cm long; each cone has numerous spirally. The seeds are small and winged, are anemophilous, but some are larger and have only a vestigial wing, are bird-dispersed. At maturity, the cones open to release the seeds, but in some of the bird-dispersed species, the seeds are only released by the bird breaking the cones open. In others, the seeds are stored in closed cones for many years until an environmental cue triggers the cones to open, releasing the seeds; the most common form of serotiny is pyriscence, in which a resin binds the cones shut until melted by a forest fire. Pines are gymnosperms; the genus is divided into two subgenera, which can be distinguished by cone and leaf characters: Pinus subg. Pinus, the yellow, or hard pine group with harder wood and two or three needles per fascicle Pinus subg.
Strobus, the white, or soft pine group with softer wood and five needles per fascicle Pines are native to the Northern Hemisphere, in a few parts of the tropics in the Southern Hemisphere. Most regions of the Northern Hemisphere host some native species of pines. One species crosses the equator in Sumatra to 2°S. In North America, various species occur in regions at latitudes from as far north as 66°N to as far south as 12°N. Pines may be found in a large variety of environments, ranging from semi-arid desert to rainforests, from sea level up to 5,200 metres, from the coldest to the hottest environments on Earth, they occur in mountainous areas with favorable soils and at least some water. Various species have been introduced to temperate and subtropical regions of both hemisp
Japan
Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies off the eastern coast of the Asian continent and stretches from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and the Philippine Sea in the south; the kanji that make up Japan's name mean "sun origin", it is called the "Land of the Rising Sun". Japan is a stratovolcanic archipelago consisting of about 6,852 islands; the four largest are Honshu, Hokkaido and Shikoku, which make up about ninety-seven percent of Japan's land area and are referred to as home islands. The country is divided into 47 prefectures in eight regions, with Hokkaido being the northernmost prefecture and Okinawa being the southernmost one; the population of 127 million is the world's tenth largest. 90.7 % of people live in cities. About 13.8 million people live in the capital of Japan. The Greater Tokyo Area is the most populous metropolitan area in the world with over 38 million people. Archaeological research indicates; the first written mention of Japan is in Chinese history texts from the 1st century AD.
Influence from other regions China, followed by periods of isolation from Western Europe, has characterized Japan's history. From the 12th century until 1868, Japan was ruled by successive feudal military shōguns who ruled in the name of the Emperor. Japan entered into a long period of isolation in the early 17th century, ended in 1853 when a United States fleet pressured Japan to open to the West. After nearly two decades of internal conflict and insurrection, the Imperial Court regained its political power in 1868 through the help of several clans from Chōshū and Satsuma – and the Empire of Japan was established. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, victories in the First Sino-Japanese War, the Russo-Japanese War and World War I allowed Japan to expand its empire during a period of increasing militarism; the Second Sino-Japanese War of 1937 expanded into part of World War II in 1941, which came to an end in 1945 following the Japanese surrender. Since adopting its revised constitution on May 3, 1947, during the occupation led by SCAP, the sovereign state of Japan has maintained a unitary parliamentary constitutional monarchy with an Emperor and an elected legislature called the National Diet.
Japan is a member of the ASEAN Plus mechanism, UN, the OECD, the G7, the G8, the G20, is considered a great power. Its economy is the world's third-largest by nominal GDP and the fourth-largest by purchasing power parity, it is the world's fourth-largest exporter and fourth-largest importer. Japan benefits from a skilled and educated workforce. Although it has renounced its right to declare war, Japan maintains a modern military with the world's eighth-largest military budget, used for self-defense and peacekeeping roles. Japan is a developed country with a high standard of living and Human Development Index, its population enjoys the highest life expectancy and third lowest infant mortality rate in the world, but is experiencing issues due to an aging population and low birthrate. Japan is renowned for its historical and extensive cinema, influential music industry, video gaming, rich cuisine and its major contributions to science and modern technology; the Japanese word for Japan is 日本, pronounced Nihon or Nippon and means "the origin of the sun".
The character nichi means "sun" or "day". The compound therefore means "origin of the sun" and is the source of the popular Western epithet "Land of the Rising Sun"; the earliest record of the name Nihon appears in the Chinese historical records of the Tang dynasty, the Old Book of Tang. At the end of the seventh century, a delegation from Japan requested that Nihon be used as the name of their country; this name may have its origin in a letter sent in 607 and recorded in the official history of the Sui dynasty. Prince Shōtoku, the Regent of Japan, sent a mission to China with a letter in which he called himself "the Emperor of the Land where the Sun rises"; the message said: "Here, I, the emperor of the country where the sun rises, send a letter to the emperor of the country where the sun sets. How are you". Prior to the adoption of Nihon, other terms such as Yamato and Wakoku were used; the term Wa is a homophone of Wo 倭, used by the Chinese as a designation for the Japanese as early as the third century Three Kingdoms period.
Another form of Wa, Wei in Chinese) was used for an early state in Japan called Nakoku during the Han dynasty. However, the Japanese disliked some connotation of Wa 倭, it was therefore replaced with the substitute character Wa, meaning "togetherness, harmony"; the English word Japan derives from the historical Chinese pronunciation of 日本. The Old Mandarin or early Wu Chinese pronunciation of Japan was recorded by Marco Polo as Cipangu. In modern Shanghainese, a Wu dialect, the pronunciation of characters 日本; the old Malay word for Japan, Japun or Japang, was borrowed from a southern coastal Chinese dialect Fukienese or Ningpo – and this Malay word was encountered by Portuguese traders in Southeast Asia in the 16th century. These Early Portuguese traders brought the word
John Lindley
John Lindley FRS was an English botanist and orchidologist. Born in Catton, near Norwich, John Lindley was one of four children of George and Mary Lindley. George Lindley ran a commercial nursery garden. Although he had great horticultural knowledge, the undertaking was not profitable and George lived in a state of indebtedness; as a boy he would assist in the garden and collected wild flowers he found growing in the Norfolk countryside. Lindley was educated at Norwich School, he would have liked to go to university or to buy a commission in the army but the family could not afford either. He became Belgian agent for a London seed merchant in 1815. At this time Lindley became acquainted with the botanist William Jackson Hooker who allowed him to use his botanical library and who introduced him to Sir Joseph Banks who offered him employment as an assistant in his herbarium, his first publication, in 1819, a translation of the Analyse du fruit of L. C. M. Richard, was followed in 1820 by an original Monographia Rosarum, with descriptions of new species, drawings executed by himself in 1821 by Monographia Digitalium, "Observations on Pomaceae", which were both contributed to the Linnean Society.
Lindley went to work at Banks’ house in London. He concentrated on the genera “Rosa” and “Digitalis” and published the monograph “A Botanical History of Roses” which distinguished seventy-six species, describes thirteen new ones and was illustrated by nineteen coloured plates painted by himself, he became acquainted with Joseph Sabine who grew a large assortment of roses and was the Secretary of the Horticultural Society of London. His employment came to an abrupt end with the death of Banks a few months later. One of Banks’ friends, a wealthy merchant called William Cattley, paid Lindley to draw and describe new plants in his garden at Barnet, he paid for the publication of “Digitalia Monographia”. In 1820, at the age of twenty-one, Lindley was elected a fellow of the Linnean Society of London. From 1821 to 1826 he published a folio work with coloured illustrations that he had painted himself, “Collectanea botanica or Figures and botanic Illustrations of rare and curious exotic Plants”. Many of these plants came from the family Orchidaceae.
Lindley was appointed assistant secretary to the Royal Horticultural Society and its new garden at Chiswick in 1822, where he supervised the collection of plants. Assistant secretary to the Horticultural Society since 1822, in 1829 Lindley was appointed to the chair of botany at University College, which he retained until 1860, he lectured on botany from 1831 at the Royal Institution, including delivering the 1833 Royal Institution Christmas Lecture, from 1836 at the Chelsea Physic Garden, starting the society's flower show in the late 1830s. Lindley described the plants collected on Thomas Livingstone Mitchell's expeditions of 1838 and wrote an Appendix to Edwards's Botanical Register of 1839, describing plants collected by James Drummond and Georgiana Molloy of the Swan River Colony in Western Australia. According to John Ryan, Lindley’s 1840 ‘Sketch of the Vegetation of the Swan River Colony’ provided ‘the most succinct portrait to date of the flora of the Swan River Settlement’, established in 1829.
The Sketch, published during November 1839 and January 1840 in Edwards’ Botanical Register and separately on its completion, was illustrated by nine hand-coloured lithographs and four wood-cuts. He played a large part in having Charles Moore appointed as Director of the Sydney Botanical Gardens. During his professorship, he wrote many scientific and popular works as well as making significant contributions to the Botanical Register, of which he was the editor for many years, to The Gardeners' Chronicle, where he was in charge of the horticultural department from 1841, he was a fellow of the Royal and Geological Societies. He received the Royal Society's royal medal in 1857, in 1853 became a corresponding member of the Institut de France. About this time, the Horticultural Society of London, which became the Royal Horticultural Society at a date, asked Lindley to draw roses and in 1822 he became the Assistant Secretary of the Society’s garden; the Society’s historian, Harold R Fletcher described him as “ … the backbone of the Society and the greatest servant it had had.”
Now with a steady income, in 1823 he married Sarah Freestone. They rented a house in rural Acton Green, a location convenient for the Society’s garden at Turnham Green; the Secretary of the Horticultural Society of London at that time was Joseph Sabine and he authorised expenditure on large projects beyond the Society’s means. Lindley was unsuccessful in moderating his actions. By 1830, the Society had mounting debts and a committee of enquiry was set up. Sabine resigned as Secretary and Lindley defended his own position and carried the Society forward with the new Honorary Secretary, George Bentham. An eminent botanist of the time, John Claudius Loudon, sought Lindley’s collaboration on his “Encyclopedia of Plants”; this covered nearly fifteen thousand species of flowering ferns. It was a massive undertaking and Lindley was responsible for most of it. During his labour on this undertaking, completed in 1829, through arduous study of character patterns, he became convinced of the superiority of the "natural" classification system devised by Antoine Laurent de Jussieu – a system that he believed reflected the great plan of nature as distinct from the "artificial" system of Linnaeus followed in the Encyclopaedi
Glossary of botanical terms
This glossary of botanical terms is a list of terms relevant to botany and plants in general. Terms of plant morphology are included here as well as at the related Glossary of plant morphology and Glossary of leaf morphology. See List of Latin and Greek words used in systematic names. You can help by adding illustrations. Ab- A prefix meaning "from, away from, or outside". Abaxial The surface of an organ facing away from the organ's axis, e.g. the lower surface of a lateral organ such as a leaf or petal. Abort To abandon development of a structure or organ. Abscission The shedding of an organ, mature or aged, e.g. a ripe fruit or an old leaf. Abscission zone A specialised layer of tissue that allows an organ to be shed by abscission when it is ripe or senescent. Formed, for example, at the base of a petiole or pedicel. Acaulescent Having no apparent stem, or at least none visible above the ground surface. Examples include some species of Agave and Attalea. Accrescent Increasing in size with age, such as a calyx that continues to grow after the corolla has fallen, for example in Physalis peruviana.
-aceae A suffix added to the stem of a generic name to form the name of a taxonomic family. Achene A dry, 1-seeded indehiscent fruit, e.g. in the genus Ranunculus. Acicular Slender or needle-shaped. Acropetal Moving from roots to leaves, e.g. of molecular signals in plants. Acrophyll The regular leaves of a mature plant, produced above the base. Acrostichoid Covering the entire abaxial surface of a frond densely so, as in Elaphoglossum and Acrostichum. Actino- A prefix that indicates a radial pattern, form, or morphology. Actinodromous Palmate or radially arranged venation with three or more primary veins arising at or near the base of the leaf and either reaching the margin or not. Actinomorphic Regular. Applies e.g. to steles and flowers in which the perianth segments within each whorl are alike in size and shape. Compare regular. Aculeate Armed with prickles, e.g. the stem of a rose. Acuminate Tapering to a point. Acute Sharply pointed. Compare obtuse. Ad- A prefix meaning "near or towards". Adaxial The surface of an organ facing towards the organ's axis, e.g. the upper surface of a lateral organ such as a leaf or petal.
Adnate Grown or fused to an organ of a different kind along a margin, e.g. a stamen fused to a petal. Compare connate. Adventitious A structure produced in an abnormal position, e.g. an adventitious bud produced from a stem rather than from the axil of a leaf. Adventive Introduced accidentally. Aerial Of the air. Aestivation The arrangement of sepals and petals or their lobes in an unexpanded flower bud. Compare vernation, the arrangement of leaves in a bud. aff. With affinity to others, akin to. Aggregate fruit A cluster of fruits formed from the free carpels of one flower, e.g. a blackberry. Compare multiple fruit. Agricultural weed See weed. alate Having a wing or wings. Albumen An older name for the endosperm of flowering plants. Except for being a storage tissue for nutrients, it is not at all like the albumen of animal embryos. Albuminous Containing endosperm. -ales A suffix added to the stem of a generic name or descriptive name to form the name of a taxonomic order. Alien A plant introduced to an area outside its natural range.
Synonymous to or used in combination with foreign, non-native, non-indigenous. Alkaloid A molecule with a nitrogenous base used as a drug, e.g. morphine and strychnine, each of which occurs in certain plants. Alternate 1. Leaves or flowers borne singly including spiralled parts. 2. When something occurs between something else, e.g. stamens alternating with petals. Compare opposite. Ament A synonym of catkin. Amphitropous When the ovule is bent so that both ends are near each other. Compare anatropous and orthotropous. Amplexicaul With the base dilated and clasping the stem of leaves. Anastomose Branching and rejoining, as with leaf venation. Anastomosis A connection or fusion of two or more veins that are diverging or branching, thereby forming a network. Anatropous When an ovule is inverted so that the micropyle faces the placenta. Compare amphitropous, orthotropous. Androdioecious Of plants, having male flowers on separate individuals. Compare andromonoecious, polygamodioecious, polygamomonoecious, polygamous.
Androecium Male parts of flower. Compare gynoecium. Abbreviation: A. For instance A 3+3 indicates 6 stamens in two whorls. Androgynophore A stalk bearing both the androecium and gynoecium of a flower above the level of insertion of the perianth. Androgynous With male and female flowers in the same inflorescence. Androphore The stalk or column supporting the stamens in certain flowers. Andromonoecious Having bisexual flowers and male flowers on the same individual plant. Compare gynomonoecious, polygamodioecious, polygamomonoecious, polygamous. Anemophily Pollination by wind. Angiosperm A flowering plant. Anisomery The condition of hav
Pinus nigra
Pinus nigra, the Austrian pine or black pine, is a moderately variable species of pine, occurring across southern Mediterranean Europe from Spain to the eastern Mediterranean on Anatolian peninsula of Turkey and on Corsica/Cyprus, including Crimea, in the high mountains of the Maghreb in North Africa. Pinus nigra is a tree of the Mediterranean forests and scrub biome; the majority of the range is in Turkey. It is found in the higher elevations of the South Apennine mixed montane forests ecoregion in southern Italy and the Tyrrhenian-Adriatic sclerophyllous and mixed forests ecoregion in Sicily. There are remnant populations in the Mediterranean conifer and mixed forests ecoregion, in the higher Atlas Mountains in Morocco and Algeria, it is found at elevations ranging from sea level to 2,000 metres, most from 250–1,600 metres. Several of the varieties have distinct English names, it has naturalized in parts of the midwestern states of the U. S south of the normal native ranges of native pines. Pinus nigra is a large coniferous evergreen tree, growing to 20–55 metres high at maturity and spreading to 20 to 40 feet wide.
The bark is grey to yellow-brown, is split by flaking fissures into scaly plates, becoming fissured with age. The leaves are more flexible in western populations; the ovulate and pollen cones appear from May to June. The mature seed cones are 5–10 cm long, with rounded scales; the seeds are 6 -- 8 mm long, with a yellow-buff wing 20 -- 25 mm long. Maturity is reached at 15–40 years. Pinus nigra is moderately fast growing, at about 30–70 centimetres per year, it has a rounded conic form, that becomes irregular with age. The tree can be long-lived, with some trees over 500 years old, it needs full sun to grow well, is intolerant of shade, is resistant to snow and ice damage. The species is divided into each further subdivided into three varieties; some authorities treat several of the varieties at subspecific rank, but this reflects tradition rather than sound taxonomy, as the distinctions between the taxa are small. SubspeciesP. Nigra subsp. Nigra in the east of the range, from Austria and central Italy, east to the Crimea and Turkey.
Needles stout, rigid, 1.5–2 mm diameter, with 3–6 layers of thick-walled hypodermal cells. P. nigra subsp. Nigra var. nigra: Austria, Balkans. P. nigra subsp. Nigra var. caramanica: Turkey, southern Greece. P. nigra subsp. Nigra var. italica: central Italy P. nigra subsp. Nigra var. pallasiana: Crimea, Cyprus. P. nigra subsp. Salzmannii in the west of the range, from southern Italy to southern France and North Africa. Needles slender, more flexible, 0.8–1.5 mm diameter, with 1–2 layers of thin-walled hypodermal cells. P. nigra subsp. Salzmannii var. salzmannii: Pyrenees, Southern France, Northern Spain. P. nigra subsp. Salzmannii var. corsicana: Corsica, Southern Italy. P. nigra subsp. Laricio Koekelare P. nigra subsp. Salzmannii var. mauretanica: Morocco, Algeria. In Mediterranean Europe and the Anatolian Peninsula, trees associated with this species include Scots pine, Serbian spruce, Bosnian pine, Norway spruce, Taurus cedar, European silver fir and related firs. Several species of juniper, various broadleaf trees are associates.
Climate and provenancePinus nigra is a light-demanding species, intolerant of shade but resistant to wind and drought. The eastern P. nigra subsp. Nigra exhibits greater winter frost hardiness than the western P. nigra subsp. Salzmannii. Different provenances or varieties are adapted to different soil types: Austrian and Pyrenees origins grow well on a wide range of soil types, Corsican origins grows poorly on limestone, while Turkish and Crimean origins grow well on limestone. Most provenances show good growth on podzolic soils; the timber of European black pine is similar to that of Scots pine and red pine, being moderately hard and straight-grained. It does however tend to be rougher and not as strong, due to its faster growth, it is used for general construction, in paper manufacture. In the United Kingdom, Pinus nigra is important both in plantations. However, serious problems have occurred with red band needle blight disease, caused by the fungus Dothistroma septosporum, resulting in a major recent decline in forestry planting there.
In the United States it is of low importance as a timber species. In regard to Austrian pine, the fungus Dothistroma septosporum is widespread and spreading out of control throughout the United States. All now growing Austrian pine are expected to be killed by this disease, it is out of control and not recommended for landscaping in groups or rows. In Turkey, this pine was and is used in various ways, both topically and internally, as well a
Bird
Birds known as Aves, are a group of endothermic vertebrates, characterised by feathers, toothless beaked jaws, the laying of hard-shelled eggs, a high metabolic rate, a four-chambered heart, a strong yet lightweight skeleton. Birds range in size from the 5 cm bee hummingbird to the 2.75 m ostrich. They rank as the world's most numerically-successful class of tetrapods, with ten thousand living species, more than half of these being passerines, sometimes known as perching birds. Birds have wings which are less developed depending on the species. Wings, which evolved from forelimbs, gave birds the ability to fly, although further evolution has led to the loss of flight in flightless birds, including ratites and diverse endemic island species of birds; the digestive and respiratory systems of birds are uniquely adapted for flight. Some bird species of aquatic environments seabirds and some waterbirds, have further evolved for swimming; the fossil record demonstrates that birds are modern feathered dinosaurs, having evolved from earlier feathered dinosaurs within the theropod group, which are traditionally placed within the saurischian dinosaurs.
The closest living relatives of birds are the crocodilians. Primitive bird-like dinosaurs that lie outside class Aves proper, in the broader group Avialae, have been found dating back to the mid-Jurassic period, around 170 million years ago. Many of these early "stem-birds", such as Archaeopteryx, were not yet capable of powered flight, many retained primitive characteristics like toothy jaws in place of beaks, long bony tails. DNA-based evidence finds that birds diversified around the time of the Cretaceous–Palaeogene extinction event 66 million years ago, which killed off the pterosaurs and all the non-avian dinosaur lineages, but birds those in the southern continents, survived this event and migrated to other parts of the world while diversifying during periods of global cooling. This makes them the sole surviving dinosaurs according to cladistics; some birds corvids and parrots, are among the most intelligent animals. Many species annually migrate great distances. Birds are social, communicating with visual signals and bird songs, participating in such social behaviours as cooperative breeding and hunting and mobbing of predators.
The vast majority of bird species are monogamous for one breeding season at a time, sometimes for years, but for life. Other species have breeding systems that are polygynous or polyandrous. Birds produce offspring by laying eggs, they are laid in a nest and incubated by the parents. Most birds have an extended period of parental care after hatching; some birds, such as hens, lay eggs when not fertilised, though unfertilised eggs do not produce offspring. Many species of birds are economically important as food for human consumption and raw material in manufacturing, with domesticated and undomesticated birds being important sources of eggs and feathers. Songbirds and other species are popular as pets. Guano is harvested for use as a fertiliser. Birds prominently figure throughout human culture. About 120–130 species have become extinct due to human activity since the 17th century, hundreds more before then. Human activity threatens about 1,200 bird species with extinction, though efforts are underway to protect them.
Recreational birdwatching is an important part of the ecotourism industry. The first classification of birds was developed by Francis Willughby and John Ray in their 1676 volume Ornithologiae. Carl Linnaeus modified that work in 1758 to devise the taxonomic classification system in use. Birds are categorised as the biological class Aves in Linnaean taxonomy. Phylogenetic taxonomy places Aves in the dinosaur clade Theropoda. Aves and a sister group, the clade Crocodilia, contain the only living representatives of the reptile clade Archosauria. During the late 1990s, Aves was most defined phylogenetically as all descendants of the most recent common ancestor of modern birds and Archaeopteryx lithographica. However, an earlier definition proposed by Jacques Gauthier gained wide currency in the 21st century, is used by many scientists including adherents of the Phylocode system. Gauthier defined Aves to include only the crown group of the set of modern birds; this was done by excluding most groups known only from fossils, assigning them, instead, to the Avialae, in part to avoid the uncertainties about the placement of Archaeopteryx in relation to animals traditionally thought of as theropod dinosaurs.
Gauthier identified four different definitions for the same biological name "Aves", a problem. Gauthier proposed to reserve the term Aves only for the crown group consisting of the last common ancestor of all living birds and all of its descendants, which corresponds to meaning number 4 below, he assigned other names to the other groups. Aves can mean all archosaurs closer to birds than to crocodiles Aves can mean those advanced archosaurs with feathers Aves can mean those feathered dinosaurs that fly Aves can mean the last common ancestor of all the living birds and all of its descendants (a "c
Mexico
Mexico the United Mexican States, is a country in the southern portion of North America. It is bordered to the north by the United States. Covering 2,000,000 square kilometres, the nation is the fifth largest country in the Americas by total area and the 13th largest independent state in the world. With an estimated population of over 120 million people, the country is the eleventh most populous state and the most populous Spanish-speaking state in the world, while being the second most populous nation in Latin America after Brazil. Mexico is a federation comprising 31 states and Mexico City, a special federal entity, the capital city and its most populous city. Other metropolises in the state include Guadalajara, Puebla, Tijuana and León. Pre-Columbian Mexico dates to about 8000 BC and is identified as one of five cradles of civilization and was home to many advanced Mesoamerican civilizations such as the Olmec, Teotihuacan, Zapotec and Aztec before first contact with Europeans. In 1521, the Spanish Empire conquered and colonized the territory from its politically powerful base in Mexico-Tenochtitlan, administered as the viceroyalty of New Spain.
Three centuries the territory became a nation state following its recognition in 1821 after the Mexican War of Independence. The post-independence period was tumultuous, characterized by economic inequality and many contrasting political changes; the Mexican–American War led to a territorial cession of the extant northern territories to the United States. The Pastry War, the Franco-Mexican War, a civil war, two empires, the Porfiriato occurred in the 19th century; the Porfiriato was ended by the start of the Mexican Revolution in 1910, which culminated with the promulgation of the 1917 Constitution and the emergence of the country's current political system as a federal, democratic republic. Mexico has the 11th largest by purchasing power parity; the Mexican economy is linked to those of its 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement partners the United States. In 1994, Mexico became the first Latin American member of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, it is classified as an upper-middle income country by the World Bank and a newly industrialized country by several analysts.
The country is considered both a regional power and a middle power, is identified as an emerging global power. Due to its rich culture and history, Mexico ranks first in the Americas and seventh in the world for number of UNESCO World Heritage Sites. Mexico is an ecologically megadiverse country, ranking fourth in the world for its biodiversity. Mexico receives a huge number of tourists every year: in 2018, it was the sixth most-visited country in the world, with 39 million international arrivals. Mexico is a member of the United Nations, the World Trade Organization, the G8+5, the G20, the Uniting for Consensus group of the UN, the Pacific Alliance trade bloc. Mēxihco is the Nahuatl term for the heartland of the Aztec Empire, namely the Valley of Mexico and surrounding territories, with its people being known as the Mexica, it is believed to be a toponym for the valley which became the primary ethnonym for the Aztec Triple Alliance as a result, although it could have been the other way around.
In the colonial era, back when Mexico was called New Spain this territory became the Intendency of Mexico and after New Spain achieved independence from the Spanish Empire it came to be known as the State of Mexico with the new country being named after its capital: the City of Mexico, which itself was founded in 1524 on top of the ancient Mexica capital of Mexico-Tenochtitlan. Traditionally, the name Tenochtitlan was thought to come from Nahuatl tetl and nōchtli and is thought to mean "Among the prickly pears rocks". However, one attestation in the late 16th-century manuscript known as "the Bancroft dialogues" suggests the second vowel was short, so that the true etymology remains uncertain; the suffix -co is the Nahuatl locative, making the word a place name. Beyond that, the etymology is uncertain, it has been suggested that it is derived from Mextli or Mēxihtli, a secret name for the god of war and patron of the Mexica, Huitzilopochtli, in which case Mēxihco means "place where Huitzilopochtli lives".
Another hypothesis suggests that Mēxihco derives from a portmanteau of the Nahuatl words for "moon" and navel. This meaning might refer to Tenochtitlan's position in the middle of Lake Texcoco; the system of interconnected lakes, of which Texcoco formed the center, had the form of a rabbit, which the Mesoamericans pareidolically associated with the moon rabbit. Still another hypothesis suggests that the word is derived from Mēctli, the name of the goddess of maguey; the name of the city-state was transliterated to Spanish as México with the phonetic value of the letter x in Medieval Spanish, which represented the voiceless postalveolar fricative. This sound, as well as the voiced postalveolar fricative, represented by a j, evolved into a voiceless velar fricative during the 16th century; this led to the use of the variant Méjico in many publications in Spanish, most notably in Spain, whereas in Mexico and most other Spanish–speaking countries, México was the preferred spelling. In recent years, the Real Academia Española, which regulates the Spanish l
