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An annual plant is a plant that completes its life cycle, from germination to the production of seeds, within one growing season, and then dies. Globally, only 6% of all plant species and 13% of herbaceous plants are annuals. The annual life cycle has independently emerged in over 120 different plant families throughout the entire angiosperm phylogeny.
The Poales are a large order of flowering plants in the monocotyledons, and includes families of plants such as the grasses, bromeliads, rushes and sedges. Sixteen plant families are currently recognized by botanists to be part of Poales.
A mycorrhiza is a symbiotic association between a fungus and a plant. The term mycorrhiza refers to the role of the fungus in the plant's rhizosphere, its root system. Mycorrhizae play important roles in plant nutrition, soil biology, and soil chemistry.
In botany, an evergreen is a plant which has foliage that remains green and functional through more than one growing season. This contrasts with deciduous plants, which lose their foliage completely during the winter or dry season.
A grassland is an area where the vegetation is dominated by grasses (Poaceae). However, sedge (Cyperaceae) and rush (Juncaceae) can also be found along with variable proportions of legumes, like clover, and other herbs. Grasslands occur naturally on all continents except Antarctica and are found in most ecoregions of the Earth. Furthermore, grasslands are one of the largest biomes on earth and dominate the landscape worldwide. There are different types of grasslands: natural grasslands, semi-natural grasslands, and agricultural grasslands. They cover 31–69% of the Earth's land area.
A savanna or savannah is a mixed woodland-grassland ecosystem characterised by the trees being sufficiently widely spaced so that the canopy does not close. The open canopy allows sufficient light to reach the ground to support an unbroken herbaceous layer consisting primarily of grasses. According to Britannica, there exists four savanna forms; savanna woodland where trees and shrubs form a light canopy, tree savanna with scattered trees and shrubs, shrub savanna with distributed shrubs, and grass savanna where trees and shrubs are mostly nonexistent.
Tropical forests are forested landscapes in tropical regions: i.e. land areas approximately bounded by the tropic of Cancer and Capricorn, but possibly affected by other factors such as prevailing winds.
A controlled or prescribed (Rx) burn, which can include hazard reduction burning, backfire, swailing or a burn-off, is a fire set intentionally for purposes of forest management, fire suppression, farming, prairie restoration or greenhouse gas abatement. A controlled burn may also refer to the intentional burning of slash and fuels through burn piles. Fire is a natural part of both forest and grassland ecology and controlled fire can be a tool for foresters.
Southwest Australia is a biogeographic region in Western Australia. It includes the Mediterranean-climate area of southwestern Australia, which is home to a diverse and distinctive flora and fauna.
This article attempts to place key plant innovations in a geological context. It concerns itself only with novel adaptations and events that had a major ecological significance, not those that are of solely anthropological interest. The timeline displays a graphical representation of the adaptations; the text attempts to explain the nature and robustness of the evidence.
The Hartig net is the network of inward-growing hyphae, that extends into the plant host root, penetrating between plant cells in the root epidermis and cortex in ectomycorrhizal symbiosis. This network is the internal component of fungal morphology in ectomycorrhizal symbiotic structures formed with host plant roots, in addition to a hyphal mantle or sheath on the root surface, and extramatrical mycelium extending from the mantle into the surrounding soil. The Hartig net is the site of mutualistic resource exchange between the fungus and the host plant. Essential nutrients for plant growth are acquired from the soil by exploration and foraging of the extramatrical mycelium, then transported through the hyphal network across the mantle and into the Hartig net, where they are released by the fungi into the root apoplastic space for uptake by the plant. The hyphae in the Hartig net acquire sugars from the plant root, which are transported to the external mycelium to provide a carbon source to sustain fungal growth.
Resprouters are plant species that are able to survive fire by the activation of dormant vegetative buds to produce regrowth.
An ectomycorrhiza is a form of symbiotic relationship that occurs between a fungal symbiont, or mycobiont, and the roots of various plant species. The mycobiont is often from the phyla Basidiomycota and Ascomycota, and more rarely from the Zygomycota. Ectomycorrhizas form on the roots of around 2% of plant species, usually woody plants, including species from the birch, dipterocarp, myrtle, beech, willow, pine and rose families. Research on ectomycorrhizas is increasingly important in areas such as ecosystem management and restoration, forestry and agriculture.
Biomass partitioning is the process by which plants divide their energy among their leaves, stems, roots, and reproductive parts. These four main components of the plant have important morphological roles: leaves take in CO2 and energy from the sun to create carbon compounds, stems grow above competitors to reach sunlight, roots absorb water and mineral nutrients from the soil while anchoring the plant, and reproductive parts facilitate the continuation of species. Plants partition biomass in response to limits or excesses in resources like sunlight, carbon dioxide, mineral nutrients, and water and growth is regulated by a constant balance between the partitioning of biomass between plant parts. An equilibrium between root and shoot growth occurs because roots need carbon compounds from photosynthesis in the shoot and shoots need nitrogen absorbed from the soil by roots. Allocation of biomass is put towards the limit to growth; a limit below ground will focus biomass to the roots and a limit above ground will favor more growth in the shoot.
A nectar spur is a hollow extension of a part of a flower. The spur may arise from various parts of the flower: the sepals, petals, or hypanthium, and often contain tissues that secrete nectar (nectaries). Nectar spurs are present in many clades across the angiosperms, and are often cited as an example of convergent evolution.
According to the northern cryptic glacial refugial hypothesis, during the last ice age cold tolerant plant and animal species persisted in ice-free microrefugia north of the Alps in Europe. The alternative hypothesis of no persistence and postglacial immigration of plants and animals from southern refugia in Europe is sometimes also called the tabula rasa hypothesis.
Woody plant encroachment is a natural phenomenon characterised by the increase in density of woody plants, bushes and shrubs, at the expense of the herbaceous layer, grasses and forbs. It predominantly occurs in grasslands, savannas and woodlands and can cause biome shifts from open grasslands and savannas to closed woodlands. The term bush encroachment refers to the expansion of native plants and not the spread of alien invasive species. It is thus defined by plant density, not species. Bush encroachment is often considered an ecological regime shift and can be a symptom of land degradation. The phenomenon is observed across different ecosystems and with different characteristics and intensities globally.
Sally Archibald is a South African scientist and Associate Professor at the University of Witwatersrand. Her research primarily focuses on savanna ecosystems within the context of global climate change as well as the exploration of fire ecology and earth-system feedbacks. Archibald was the recipient of the 2012 Mercer Award for her co-authorship of the paper "Tree cover in sub-Saharan Africa: Rainfall and fire constrain forest and savanna as alternative stable states".
Mariah Suzanne Carbone is an American geophysicist who is a professor of Geosciences at the Center for ecosystem science and society, Northern Arizona University. She studies terrestrial ecosystems and how they respond to environmental change.
References
- 1 2 Maurin, O.; Davies, T.J.; Burrows, J.E.; Daru, B.H.; Yessoufou, K.; Muasya, A.M.; van der Bank, M.; Bond, W.J. (2014). "Savanna fire and the origins of the 'underground forests' of Africa" (PDF). New Phytologist. 204 (1): 201–214. doi: 10.1111/nph.12936 . hdl:2263/49453. PMID 25039765.
- ↑ Pausas, JG; Lamont, BB; Paula, S; Appezzato-da-Glória, B; Fidelis, A (2018). "Unearthing belowground bud banks in fire-prone ecosystems". New Phytologist. 217 (4): 1435–1448. doi: 10.1111/nph.14982 . hdl: 10261/183163 . PMID 29334401.
- ↑ Pennington, R. Toby; Hughes, Colin E. (2014). "The remarkable congruence of New and Old World savanna origins". New Phytologist. 204 (1): 4–6. doi: 10.1111/nph.12996 . PMID 25154641.
- ↑ "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2015-11-18. Retrieved 2015-04-27.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link) - ↑ Čorkalo, Marko (2023). Structure and composition of woody belowground biomass of geoxyle in grasslands and open woodlands in south-central Angola (Thesis). Zagreb: Faculty of Science, University of Zagreb - Department of Biology.