Portal:Plants

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Plants

Plants are a major group of lifeforms and include familiar organismssuch as trees, herbs, bushes, grasses, vines, ferns, mosses, and green algae. About 350,000 speciesof plants, defined as seed plants, bryophytes, fernsand fern allies, are estimated to exist currently. As of 2004, some 287,655 species had been identified, of which 258,650 are floweringand 15,000 bryophytes. Green plants, sometimes called metaphytes, obtain most of their energy from sunlightvia a process called photosynthesis.

Aristotle divided all living things between plants (which generally do not move), and animals (which often are mobile to catch their food). In Linnaeus' system, these became the Kingdoms Vegetabilia (later Metaphyta or Plantae) and Animalia (also called Metazoa). Since then, it has become clear that the Plantae as originally defined included several unrelated groups, and the fungi and several groups of algae were removed to new kingdoms. However, these are still often considered plants in many contexts, both technical and popular. Indeed, an attempt to perfectly match "plant" with a single taxon is problematic, because for most people the term plant is only vaguely related to the phylogenic concepts on which modern taxonomy and systematics are based.

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Banksia epica is a shrubthat grows on the south coast of Western Australia. A spreading bush with wedge-shaped serrated leaves and large creamy-yellow flower spikes, it grows up to 3½ metres (11½ ft) high. It is known only from two isolated populations in the remote south east of the state, near the western edge of the Great Australian Bight. Both populations occur amongst coastal heathon cliff-top dunesof siliceoussand.

One of the most recently described Banksia species, it was probably seen by Edward John Eyre in 1841, but was not collected until 1973, and was only recognised as a distinct species in 1988. There has been very little research on the species since then, so knowledge of its ecology and cultivation potential is limited. It is placed in Banksia ser. Cyrtostylis, alongside its close relative, the well-known and widely cultivated B. media (Southern Plains Banksia).

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Pines are mostly 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, typically 1-5 cm long, falling as soon as they have shed their pollen. The larger female cones, such as this Monterey Pine cone, are typically 3-60 cm long, having numerous spirally arranged scales with two seeds on each fertile scale.

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Did you know...

...that the Australian Myrtaceae Kunzea ambigua (White Kunzea, pictured) is used in windbreaks and dune stabilization as well as natural landscaping gardens?
...that the four volumes of Henry Frederick Conrad Sander's magnum opus were dedicated to the respective queens or empresses of England, the Germany and Prussia, the Russia, and the Belgians?
...that mosses of the genus Polytrichum (haircap moss) have adapted to trap moist air between rows of lamellae?
...that 19th-century orchid-lover John Day painted over 3,000 illustrations of these flowers?
...that the range of the Californian threatened Ferocactus viridescens (San Diego barrel cactus) is mostly located within San Diego County?
... that Douglas Barton Osborne Savile showed that the coevolution of rust fungi and their host plants could be used as an aid to plant taxonomy and vice-versa?

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Tasks you can do

Here are some tasks you can do:

Describe all families, genera and species of the kingdom Plantae.
For species, describe botanical properties, distribution, multiplication, usage (medicine, food, etc.), botanical history, cultivation information.
Develop and implement a robust method of naming plant article for the ease of navigation and searching for Wikipedia users.
Maintain Category:Plants and its subcategories.