Topic: Plants (Page 2)

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๐Ÿ”— Azolla Event

๐Ÿ”— Climate change ๐Ÿ”— Environment ๐Ÿ”— Plants ๐Ÿ”— Arctic ๐Ÿ”— Palaeontology ๐Ÿ”— Geology

The Azolla event is a scenario hypothesized to have occurred in the middle Eocene epoch, around 49ย million years ago, when blooms of the freshwater fern Azolla are thought to have happened in the Arctic Ocean. As they sank to the stagnant sea floor, they were incorporated into the sediment; the resulting draw-down of carbon dioxide has been speculated to have helped transform the planet from a "greenhouse Earth" state, hot enough for turtles and palm trees to prosper at the poles, to the current icehouse Earth known as the Late Cenozoic Ice Age.

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๐Ÿ”— The most remote tree in the world

๐Ÿ”— Africa ๐Ÿ”— Plants ๐Ÿ”— Africa/Niger

The Tรฉnรฉrรฉ Tree (French: L'Arbre du Tรฉnรฉrรฉ) was a solitary acacia, of either Acacia raddiana or Acacia tortilis, that was once considered the most isolated tree on Earthโ€”the only one for over 400 kilometres (250ย mi). It was a landmark on caravan routes through the Tรฉnรฉrรฉ region of the Sahara Desert in northeast Niger, so well known that it and the Arbre Perdu (Lost Tree) to the north are the only trees to be shown on a map at a scale of 1:4,000,000. The Tree of Tรฉnรฉrรฉ was located near a 40-metre (130ย ft) deep well. It was knocked down in 1973, by a truck driver.

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๐Ÿ”— Old Tjikko, the oldest living clonal Norway Spruce

๐Ÿ”— Plants ๐Ÿ”— Sweden

Old Tjikko is a 9,550 year-old Norway Spruce, located on Fulufjรคllet Mountain of Dalarna province in Sweden. Old Tjikko originally gained fame as the "world's oldest tree." Old Tjikko is, however, a clonal tree that has regenerated new trunks, branches and roots over millennia rather than an individual tree of great age. Old Tjikko is recognized as the oldest living Picea abies and the third oldest known clonal tree.

The age of the tree was determined by carbon dating of genetically matched plant material collected from under the tree, as dendrochronology would cause damage. The trunk itself is estimated to be only a few hundred years old, but the plant has survived for much longer due to a process known as layering (when a branch comes in contact with the ground, it sprouts a new root), or vegetative cloning (when the trunk dies but the root system is still alive, it may sprout a new trunk).

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๐Ÿ”— Toxic squash syndrome

๐Ÿ”— Chemicals ๐Ÿ”— Plants

Cucurbitacin is a class of biochemical compounds that some plants โ€“ notably members of the pumpkin and gourd family, Cucurbitaceae โ€“ produce and which function as a defence against herbivores. Cucurbitacins are chemically classified as triterpenes, formally derived from cucurbitane, a triterpene hydrocarbon โ€“ specifically, from the unsaturated variant cucurbit-5-ene, or 19(10โ†’9ฮฒ)-abeo-10ฮฑ-lanost-5-ene. They often occur as glycosides. They and their derivatives have been found in many plant families (including Brassicaceae, Cucurbitaceae, Scrophulariaceae, Begoniaceae, Elaeocarpaceae, Datiscaceae, Desfontainiaceae, Polemoniaceae, Primulaceae, Rubiaceae, Sterculiaceae, Rosaceae, and Thymelaeaceae), in some mushrooms (including Russula and Hebeloma) and even in some marine mollusks.

Cucurbitacins may be a taste deterrent in plants foraged by some animals and in some edible plants preferred by humans, like cucumbers and zucchinis. In laboratory research, cucurbitacins have cytotoxic properties and are under study for their potential biological activities.

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๐Ÿ”— Pando (tree)

๐Ÿ”— United States ๐Ÿ”— Plants ๐Ÿ”— United States/Utah

Pando (Latin for "I spread out"), also known as the trembling giant, is a clonal colony of an individual male quaking aspen (Populus tremuloides) determined to be a single living organism by identical genetic markers and assumed to have one massive underground root system. The plant is located in the Fremont River Ranger District of the Fishlake National Forest at the western edge of the Colorado Plateau in south-central Utah, United States, around 1 mile (1.6ย km) southwest of Fish Lake. Pando occupies 43 hectares (106 acres) and is estimated to weigh collectively 6,000,000 kilograms (6,600 short tons), making it the heaviest known organism. The root system of Pando, at an estimated 80,000 years old, is among the oldest known living organisms.

Pando is currently thought to be dying. Though the exact reasons are not known, it is thought to be a combination of factors including drought, grazing, human development, and fire suppression. The Western Aspen Alliance, a research group at Utah State Universityโ€™s S.J. & Jessie E. Quinney College of Natural Resources, has been studying the tree in an effort to save it, and the United States Forest Service is currently experimenting with several 5-acre (2ย ha) sections of it in an effort to find a means to save it. Grazing animals have threatened Pando's ability to produce young offsprings to replace trees that are dying. Human development in the area is another threat, these two threats have caused pando trees to shrink in size and decrease over the past 50 years.

A study published in October 2018 concludes that Pando has not been growing for the past 30โ€“40 years. Human interference was named as the primary cause, with the study specifically citing people allowing cattle and deer populations to thrive, their grazing resulting in fewer saplings and dying individual trees.

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๐Ÿ”— Lithops

๐Ÿ”— Plants

Lithops is a genus of succulent plants in the ice plant family, Aizoaceae. Members of the genus are native to southern Africa. The name is derived from the Ancient Greek words ฮปฮฏฮธฮฟฯ‚ (lรญthos), meaning "stone," and แฝ„ฯˆ (รณps), meaning "face," referring to the stone-like appearance of the plants. They avoid being eaten by blending in with surrounding rocks and are often known as pebble plants or living stones. The formation of the name from the Ancient Greek "-ops" means that even a single plant is called a Lithops.

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๐Ÿ”— Plant Blindness

๐Ÿ”— Plants

Plant blindness is an informally-proposed form of cognitive bias, which in its broadest meaning, is a human tendency to ignore plant species. This includes such phenomena as not noticing plants in the surrounding environment, not recognizing the importance of plant life to the whole biosphere and to human affairs, a philosophical view of plants as an inferior form of life to animals and/or the inability to appreciate the unique features or aesthetics of plants.

The term was coined by the botanists and biology educators J. H. Wandersee and E. E. Schussler in their 1999 publication 'Preventing Plant Blindness'. Scientists have suggested that the reason some people don't notice plants is because plants are stationary and similarly coloured, although other research has suggested that plant blindness is affected by cultural practices. A US study looked at how plants and animals are perceived using "attentional blink" (the ability to notice one of two rapidly presented images). The study showed that participants were more accurate in detecting animals in images, rather than plants. The researchers also suggested possible strategies for characterizing and overcoming zoo-centrism.

According to the BBC journalist Christine Ro, plant blindness is potentially linked to nature deficit disorder, which she construes is causing what she claims is reduced funding and fewer classes for botany.

The term was coined in 1999 by botanists James Wandersee and Elisabeth Schussler.

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๐Ÿ”— List of Leaf Vegetables

๐Ÿ”— Lists ๐Ÿ”— Food and drink ๐Ÿ”— Plants

This is a list of vegetables which are grown or harvested primarily for the consumption of their leafy parts, either raw or cooked. Many plants with leaves that are consumed in small quantities as a spice such as oregano, for medicinal purposes such as lime, or used in infusions such as tea, are not included in this list.

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๐Ÿ”— Hallucinogenic Plants in Chinese Herbals

๐Ÿ”— Medicine ๐Ÿ”— China ๐Ÿ”— Plants ๐Ÿ”— Pharmacology ๐Ÿ”— Psychoactive and Recreational Drugs

For over two millennia, texts in Chinese herbology and traditional Chinese medicine have recorded medicinal plants that are also hallucinogens and psychedelics. Some are familiar psychoactive plants in Western herbal medicine (e.g., Chinese: ่Žจ่ช; pinyin: lร ngdร ng, i.e. Hyoscyamus niger), but several Chinese plants have not been noted as hallucinogens in modern works (e.g.,Chinese: ้›ฒๅฏฆ; pinyin: yรบnshรญ; lit. 'cloud seed', i.e. Caesalpinia decapetala). Chinese herbals are an important resource for the history of botany, for instance, Zhang Hua's c. 290 Bowuzhi is the earliest record of the psilocybin mushroom xiร ojรนn ็ฌ‘่Œ (lit. "laughing mushroom", i.e. Gymnopilus junonius).

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๐Ÿ”— Synsepalum Dulcificum (Miracle Berry)

๐Ÿ”— Africa ๐Ÿ”— Food and drink ๐Ÿ”— Plants

Synsepalum dulcificum is a plant in the Sapotaceae family, native to tropical Africa. It is known for its berry that, when eaten, causes sour foods (such as lemons and limes) subsequently consumed to taste sweet. This effect is due to miraculin. Common names for this species and its berry include miracle fruit, miracle berry, miraculous berry, sweet berry, and in West Africa, where the species originates, agbayun (in Yoruba), taami, asaa, and ledidi.

The berry itself has a low sugar content and a mildly sweet tang. It contains a glycoprotein molecule, with some trailing carbohydrate chains, called miraculin. When the fleshy part of the fruit is eaten, this molecule binds to the tongue's taste buds, causing sour foods to taste sweet. At neutral pH, miraculin binds and blocks the receptors, but at low pH (resulting from ingestion of sour foods) miraculin binds proteins and becomes able to activate the sweet receptors, resulting in the perception of sweet taste. This effect lasts until the protein is washed away by saliva (up to about 30 minutes).

The names miracle fruit and miracle berry are shared by Gymnema sylvestre and Thaumatococcus daniellii, which are two other species used to alter the perceived sweetness of foods.

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