Bog
A bog or bogland is a wetland that accumulates peat, a deposit of dead plant material—often mosses, in a majority of cases, sphagnum moss. It is one of the four main types of wetlands. Other names for bogs include mire and muskeg, they are covered in ericaceous shrubs rooted in the sphagnum moss and peat. The gradual accumulation of decayed plant material in a bog functions as a carbon sink. Bogs occur where the water at the ground surface is low in nutrients. In some cases, the water is derived from precipitation, in which case they are termed ombrotrophic. Water flowing out of bogs has a characteristic brown colour, which comes from dissolved peat tannins. In general, the low fertility and cool climate result in slow plant growth, but decay is slower owing to the saturated soil. Hence, peat accumulates. Large areas of the landscape can be covered many meters deep in peat. Bogs have distinctive assemblages of animal and plant species, are of high importance for biodiversity in landscapes that are otherwise settled and farmed.
Bogs are distributed in cold, temperate climes in boreal ecosystems in the Northern Hemisphere. The world's largest wetland is the peat bogs of the Western Siberian Lowlands in Russia, which cover more than a million square kilometres. Large peat bogs occur in North America the Hudson Bay Lowland and the Mackenzie River Basin, they are less common in the Southern Hemisphere, with the largest being the Magellanic moorland, comprising some 44,000 square kilometres. Sphagnum bogs were widespread in northern Europe but have been cleared and drained for agriculture. A 2014 expedition leaving from Itanga village, Republic of the Congo, discovered a peat bog "as big as England" which stretches into neighboring Democratic Republic of Congo. There are many specialised animals and plants associated with bog habitat. Most are capable of waterlogging. Sphagnum is abundant, along with ericaceous shrubs; the shrubs are evergreen, understood to assist in conservation of nutrients. In drier locations, evergreen trees can occur, in which case the bog blends into the surrounding expanses of boreal evergreen forest.
Sedges are one of the more common herbaceous species. Carnivorous plants such as sundews and pitcher plants have adapted to the low-nutrient conditions by using invertebrates as a nutrient source. Orchids have adapted to these conditions through the use of mycorrhizal fungi to extract nutrients; some shrubs such as Myrica gale have root nodules in which nitrogen fixation occurs, thereby providing another supplemental source of nitrogen. Bogs are recognized as a significant/specific habitat type by a number of governmental and conservation agencies, they can provide habitat for mammals, such as caribou and beavers, as well as for species of nesting shorebirds, such as Siberian cranes and yellowlegs. The United Kingdom in its Biodiversity Action Plan establishes bog habitats as a priority for conservation. Russia has a large reserve system in the West Siberian Lowland; the highest protected status occurs in Zapovedniks. Bogs have distinctive insects. In Ireland, the viviparous lizard, the only known reptile in the country, dwells in bogland.
Bog habitats may develop depending on the climate and topography. One way of classifying bogs is based upon their location in the landscape, their source of water; these develop in sloping valleys or hollows. A layer of peat fills the deepest part of the valley, a stream may run through the surface of the bog. Valley bogs may develop in dry and warm climates, but because they rely on ground or surface water, they only occur on acidic substrates; these develop over either non-acidic or acidic substrates. Over centuries there is a progression from open lake, to a marsh, to a fen, to a carr, as silt or peat accumulates within the lake. Peat builds up to a level where the land surface is too flat for ground or surface water to reach the center of the wetland; this part, becomes wholly rain-fed, the resulting acidic conditions allow the development of bog. The bog continues to form peat, over time a shallow dome of bog peat develops into a raised bog; the dome is a few meters high in the center and is surrounded by strips of fen or other wetland vegetation at the edges or along streamsides where groundwater can percolate into the wetland.
The various types of raised bog may be divided into: Coastal bog Plateau bog Upland bog Kermi bog String bog Palsa bog Polygonal bog In cool climates with high rainfall, the ground surface may remain waterlogged for much of the time, providing conditions for the development of bog vegetation. In these circumstances, bog develops as a layer "blanketing" much of the land, including hilltops and slopes. Although a blanket bog is more common on acidic substrates, under some conditions it may develop on neutral or alkaline ones, if abundant acidic rainwater predominates over the groundwater. A blanket bog cannot occur in drier or warmer climates, because under those conditions hilltops and sloping ground dry out
Plantaginaceae
Plantaginaceae, the plantain family, is a family of flowering plants in the order Lamiales. In older classifications it used to be the only family of the order Plantaginales, but numerous phylogenetic studies, summarized by the Angiosperm Phylogeny Group, have demonstrated that this taxon should be included within Lamiales; the plantain family as traditionally circumscribed consisted of only three genera, Bougueria and Plantago. However phylogenetic research has indicated that Plantaginaceae s.s. were nested within Scrophulariaceae. Although Veronicaceae is the oldest family name for this group, Plantaginaceae is a conserved name under the International Code of Botanical Nomenclature and thus has priority over any earlier family name for a family including Plantago. Furthermore, the ICBN does not consider family names published before 1789 to be names eligible for conservation, thus ruling out Veronicaceae; the name Antirrhinaceae has been proposed for conservation over Plantaginaceae. In the meantime, the Angiosperm Phylogeny Group has accepted the name Plantaginaceae.
However, Olmstead has chosen to use the name Veronicaceae, a synonym. Plantaginaceae s.l. are a diverse, cosmopolitan family, occurring in temperate zones. The group consists of herbs, shrubs and a few aquatic plants with roots. Being so diverse, the circumscription of this family is difficult to establish; the leaves are simple to compound. Unusual in Lamiales is the absence of vertical partitions in the heads of the glandular hairs; the structure and form of the flowers is variable. Some genera are 4-merous, such as Aragoa; the flowers of most genera are polysymmetric. The corolla is two-lipped. In some taxa, the androecium is formed before the corolla; the fruit is a capsule. A group of genera including Lindernia has been segregated as the family Linderniaceae, recognized by Haston et al. 2007, as "Post-APG II family". The enlarged Plantaginaceae consists of about 1,900 species; the largest genus is Veronica with about 450 species. Veronica includes the genera Hebe and Synthyris often treated as distinct.
All genera of Plantaginaceae were included in Scrophulariaceae except where otherwise stated. Although GRIN includes Lafuentea Lag. in the Antirrhineae tribe, in the phylogenetic analysis of Fernández-Mazuecos et al. it was a sister to the Antirrhineae as noted by Albach. For the time being it should be considered an outgroup. Olmstead, R. G. dePamphilis, C. W. Wolfe, A. D. Young, N. D. Elisons, W. J. & Reeves P. A.. "Disintegration of the Scrophulariaceae". American Journal of Botany. 88: 348–361. Doi:10.2307/2657024. JSTOR 2657024. PMID 11222255. CS1 maint: Multiple names: authors list Olmstead, R. G.. "Whatever happened to the Scrophulariaceae?". Fremontia. 30: 13–22. Vargas P, JA Rosselló, R Oyama, J Güemes. 2004 Molecular evidence for naturalness of genera in the tribe Antirrhineae and three independent evolutionary lineages from the New World and the Old. Plant Syst Evol 249:151–172. Treatment of Plantaginaceae in MOBOT
Plantago media
Plantago media, known as the hoary plantain, is a species of flowering plant in the plantain family Plantaginaceae. It is native to central and western Europe, including Great Britain and introduced to parts of the north-east United States, its generic name is derived from the Latin for sole. Plantago media grows in damp grassy meadows up to an altitude of 2000 m. A slender stalk of between 5 and 50 cm develops from a basal rosette of finely-haired leaves. Delicate pink-white flowers are borne between September. P. media is hermaphrodite and is pollinated by wind or insects bees. Plantago media is native to Eurasia, it is scarce in Scotland and Ireland. It is calcicole, characteristic of soils on chalk or limestone, growing in grassland, meadows and waste places; the plant is edible. Archeological finds testify to its use during the Roman era in Britain
Flower
A flower, sometimes known as a bloom or blossom, is the reproductive structure found in flowering plants. The biological function of a flower is to effect reproduction by providing a mechanism for the union of sperm with eggs. Flowers may allow selfing; some flowers produce diaspores without fertilization. Flowers are the site where gametophytes develop. Many flowers have evolved to be attractive to animals, so as to cause them to be vectors for the transfer of pollen. After fertilization, the ovary of the flower develops into fruit containing seeds. In addition to facilitating the reproduction of flowering plants, flowers have long been admired and used by humans to bring beauty to their environment, as objects of romance, religion, medicine and as a source of food; the essential parts of a flower can be considered in two parts: the vegetative part, consisting of petals and associated structures in the perianth, the reproductive or sexual parts. A stereotypical flower consists of four kinds of structures attached to the tip of a short stalk.
Each of these kinds of parts is arranged in a whorl on the receptacle. The four main whorls are as follows: Collectively the calyx and corolla form the perianth. Calyx: the outermost whorl consisting of units called sepals. Corolla: the next whorl toward the apex, composed of units called petals, which are thin and colored to attract animals that help the process of pollination. Androecium: the next whorl, consisting of units called stamens. Stamens consist of two parts: a stalk called a filament, topped by an anther where pollen is produced by meiosis and dispersed. Gynoecium: the innermost whorl of a flower, consisting of one or more units called carpels; the carpel or multiple fused carpels form a hollow structure called an ovary, which produces ovules internally. Ovules are megasporangia and they in turn produce megaspores by meiosis which develop into female gametophytes; these give rise to egg cells. The gynoecium of a flower is described using an alternative terminology wherein the structure one sees in the innermost whorl is called a pistil.
A pistil may consist of a number of carpels fused together. The sticky tip of the pistil, the stigma, is the receptor of pollen; the supportive stalk, the style, becomes the pathway for pollen tubes to grow from pollen grains adhering to the stigma. The relationship to the gynoecium on the receptacle is described as hypogynous, perigynous, or epigynous. Although the arrangement described above is considered "typical", plant species show a wide variation in floral structure; these modifications have significance in the evolution of flowering plants and are used extensively by botanists to establish relationships among plant species. The four main parts of a flower are defined by their positions on the receptacle and not by their function. Many flowers lack some parts or parts may be modified into other functions and/or look like what is another part. In some families, like Ranunculaceae, the petals are reduced and in many species the sepals are colorful and petal-like. Other flowers have modified stamens.
Flowers show great variation and plant scientists describe this variation in a systematic way to identify and distinguish species. Specific terminology is used to describe their parts. Many flower parts are fused together; when petals are fused into a tube or ring that falls away as a single unit, they are sympetalous. Connate petals may have distinctive regions: the cylindrical base is the tube, the expanding region is the throat and the flaring outer region is the limb. A sympetalous flower, with bilateral symmetry with an upper and lower lip, is bilabiate. Flowers with connate petals or sepals may have various shaped corolla or calyx, including campanulate, tubular, salverform or rotate. Referring to "fusion," as it is done, appears questionable because at least some of the processes involved may be non-fusion processes. For example, the addition of intercalary growth at or below the base of the primordia of floral appendages such as sepals, petals and carpels may lead to a common base, not the result of fusion.
Many flowers have a symmetry. When the perianth is bisected through the central axis from any point and symmetrical halves are produced, the flower is said to be actinomorphic or regular, e.g. rose or trillium. This is an example of radial symmetry; when flowers are bisected and produce only one line that produces symmetrical halves, the flower is said to be irregular or zygomorphic, e.g. snapdragon or most orchids. Flowers may be directly attached to the plant at their base; the stem or stalk subtending a flower is called a peduncle. If a peduncle supports more than o
Asia
Asia is Earth's largest and most populous continent, located in the Eastern and Northern Hemispheres. It shares the continental landmass of Eurasia with the continent of Europe and the continental landmass of Afro-Eurasia with both Europe and Africa. Asia covers an area of 44,579,000 square kilometres, about 30% of Earth's total land area and 8.7% of the Earth's total surface area. The continent, which has long been home to the majority of the human population, was the site of many of the first civilizations. Asia is notable for not only its overall large size and population, but dense and large settlements, as well as vast populated regions, its 4.5 billion people constitute 60% of the world's population. In general terms, Asia is bounded on the east by the Pacific Ocean, on the south by the Indian Ocean, on the north by the Arctic Ocean; the border of Asia with Europe is a historical and cultural construct, as there is no clear physical and geographical separation between them. It has moved since its first conception in classical antiquity.
The division of Eurasia into two continents reflects East–West cultural and ethnic differences, some of which vary on a spectrum rather than with a sharp dividing line. The most accepted boundaries place Asia to the east of the Suez Canal separating it from Africa. China and India alternated in being the largest economies in the world from 1 to 1800 CE. China was a major economic power and attracted many to the east, for many the legendary wealth and prosperity of the ancient culture of India personified Asia, attracting European commerce and colonialism; the accidental discovery of a trans-Atlantic route from Europe to America by Columbus while in search for a route to India demonstrates this deep fascination. The Silk Road became the main east–west trading route in the Asian hinterlands while the Straits of Malacca stood as a major sea route. Asia has exhibited economic dynamism as well as robust population growth during the 20th century, but overall population growth has since fallen. Asia was the birthplace of most of the world's mainstream religions including Hinduism, Judaism, Buddhism, Taoism, Islam, Sikhism, as well as many other religions.
Given its size and diversity, the concept of Asia—a name dating back to classical antiquity—may have more to do with human geography than physical geography. Asia varies across and within its regions with regard to ethnic groups, environments, historical ties and government systems, it has a mix of many different climates ranging from the equatorial south via the hot desert in the Middle East, temperate areas in the east and the continental centre to vast subarctic and polar areas in Siberia. The boundary between Asia and Africa is the Red Sea, the Gulf of Suez, the Suez Canal; this makes Egypt a transcontinental country, with the Sinai peninsula in Asia and the remainder of the country in Africa. The border between Asia and Europe was defined by European academics; the Don River became unsatisfactory to northern Europeans when Peter the Great, king of the Tsardom of Russia, defeating rival claims of Sweden and the Ottoman Empire to the eastern lands, armed resistance by the tribes of Siberia, synthesized a new Russian Empire extending to the Ural Mountains and beyond, founded in 1721.
The major geographical theorist of the empire was a former Swedish prisoner-of-war, taken at the Battle of Poltava in 1709 and assigned to Tobolsk, where he associated with Peter's Siberian official, Vasily Tatishchev, was allowed freedom to conduct geographical and anthropological studies in preparation for a future book. In Sweden, five years after Peter's death, in 1730 Philip Johan von Strahlenberg published a new atlas proposing the Urals as the border of Asia. Tatishchev announced; the latter had suggested the Emba River as the lower boundary. Over the next century various proposals were made until the Ural River prevailed in the mid-19th century; the border had been moved perforce from the Black Sea to the Caspian Sea into which the Ural River projects. The border between the Black Sea and the Caspian is placed along the crest of the Caucasus Mountains, although it is sometimes placed further north; the border between Asia and the region of Oceania is placed somewhere in the Malay Archipelago.
The Maluku Islands in Indonesia are considered to lie on the border of southeast Asia, with New Guinea, to the east of the islands, being wholly part of Oceania. The terms Southeast Asia and Oceania, devised in the 19th century, have had several vastly different geographic meanings since their inception; the chief factor in determining which islands of the Malay Archipelago are Asian has been the location of the colonial possessions of the various empires there. Lewis and Wigen assert, "The narrowing of'Southeast Asia' to its present boundaries was thus a gradual process." Geographical Asia is a cultural artifact of European conceptions of the world, beginning with the Ancient Greeks, being imposed onto other cultures, an imprecise concept causing endemic contention about what it means. Asia does not correspond to the cultural borders of its various types of constituents. From the time of Herodotus a minority of geographers have rejected the three-continent system on the grounds that there is no substantial physical separation between
Americas
The Americas comprise the totality of the continents of North and South America. Together, they comprise the New World. Along with their associated islands, they cover 8% of Earth's total surface area and 28.4% of its land area. The topography is dominated by the American Cordillera, a long chain of mountains that runs the length of the west coast; the flatter eastern side of the Americas is dominated by large river basins, such as the Amazon, St. Lawrence River / Great Lakes basin, La Plata. Since the Americas extend 14,000 km from north to south, the climate and ecology vary from the arctic tundra of Northern Canada and Alaska, to the tropical rain forests in Central America and South America. Humans first settled the Americas from Asia between 17,000 years ago. A second migration of Na-Dene speakers followed from Asia; the subsequent migration of the Inuit into the neoarctic around 3500 BCE completed what is regarded as the settlement by the indigenous peoples of the Americas. The first known European settlement in the Americas was by the Norse explorer Leif Erikson.
However, the colonization never became permanent and was abandoned. The Spanish voyages of Christopher Columbus from 1492 to 1502 resulted in permanent contact with European powers, which led to the Columbian exchange and inaugurated a period of exploration and colonization whose effects and consequences persist to the present. Diseases introduced from Europe and West Africa devastated the indigenous peoples, the European powers colonized the Americas. Mass emigration from Europe, including large numbers of indentured servants, importation of African slaves replaced the indigenous peoples. Decolonization of the Americas began with the American Revolution in the 1770s and ended with the Spanish–American War in the late 1890s. All of the population of the Americas resides in independent countries; the Americas are home to over a billion inhabitants, two-thirds of which reside in the United States, Brazil, or Mexico. It is home to eight megacities: New York City, Mexico City, São Paulo, Los Angeles, Buenos Aires, Rio de Janeiro, Bogotá, Lima.
The name America was first recorded in 1507. Christie's auction house says a two-dimensional globe created by Martin Waldseemüller was the earliest recorded use of the term; the name was used in the Cosmographiae Introductio written by Matthias Ringmann, in reference to South America. It was applied to both North and South America by Gerardus Mercator in 1538. America derives from the Latin version of Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci's first name; the feminine form America accorded with the feminine names of Asia and Europa. In modern English and South America are considered separate continents, taken together are called America or the Americas in the plural; when conceived as a unitary continent, the form is the continent of America in the singular. However, without a clarifying context, singular America in English refers to the United States of America. In the English-speaking world, the term America used to refer to a single continent until the 1950s: According to historians Kären Wigen and Martin W. Lewis, While it might seem surprising to find North and South America still joined into a single continent in a book published in the United States in 1937, such a notion remained common until World War II.
By the 1950s, however all American geographers had come to insist that the visually distinct landmasses of North and South America deserved separate designations. This shift did not seem to happen in Romance-speaking countries, where America is still considered a continent encompassing the North America and South America subcontinents, as well as Central America; the first inhabitants migrated into the Americas from Asia. Habitation sites are known in Alaska and the Yukon from at least 20,000 years ago, with suggested ages of up to 40,000 years. Beyond that, the specifics of the Paleo-Indian migration to and throughout the Americas, including the dates and routes traveled, are subject to ongoing research and discussion. Widespread habitation of the Americas occurred during the late glacial maximum, from 16,000 to 13,000 years ago; the traditional theory has been that these early migrants moved into the Beringia land bridge between eastern Siberia and present-day Alaska around 40,000–17,000 years ago, when sea levels were lowered during the Quaternary glaciation.
These people are believed to have followed herds of now-extinct pleistocene megafauna along ice-free corridors that stretched between the Laurentide and Cordilleran ice sheets. Another route proposed is that, either on foot or using primitive boats, they migrated down the Pacific coast to South America. Evidence of the latter would since have been covered by a sea level rise of hundreds of meters following the last ice age. Both routes may have
Plantago leiopetala
Plantago leiopetala is a herbaceous perennial, caulescent with a thick woody, white pupescent stem up to 6 cm in height, bearing the bases of old petioles and scapes. Lanceolate, glabrous or glabrescent leaves up to 21 cm in length, borne in rosette at end of stem. Spikes, 1 -- 3 cm, supported by 30 cm in length. Flowers with glabrous sepals, sometimes shortly villous above, corolla-lobes 2.1–3 mm. Flowers from March to July. A rare plant endemic to the islands of Madeira and Porto Santo, it inhabits cliffs and rocky slopes on the north coast of Madeira from São Jorge west to Porto do Moniz and on higher peaks and rocky areas of Porto Santo
