Conifer leaves are those of coniferous plants and trees, which unlike deciduous trees do not lose their leaves annually. Conifer leaves are generally firm and scalelike, and generally remain green year round. Shown above are leaves of a coniferous cedar tree in the grand forest.
List #28
Deciduous trees and plants shed their leaves annually, usually in autumn before winter. This falling action is a characteristic of the season, so much so we gave it another name- “Fall.” Pictured above is a fallen deciduous maple leaf that has begun the decomposition process.
List #32
Insects are a class of invertebrates within the arthopod phylum. Insects have six legs, an exoskeleton, a three part segmented body, two head antennae and very often one or two pairs of wings. Insects are extremely plentiful on earth, with over 10 quintillion individuals alive at any given time and over 925,000 species having been identified. Accordingly, insects are diverse and come in all shapes, sizes and behaviors. Above we can see several ants forming a trail near their colony.
List #60
Blackberry plants, like the one pictured above, are known for their painful and annoying thorns. These thorns are part of the stems of the blackberry bush, and are a modification of the stem for defense. Nobody wants to eat a plant with a mouthful of thorns, right?
Lichen is not moss. Neither are lichens plants or related to plants. However like plants they survive using photosynthesis. Lichen is a composite organism, consisting of algae or cynobacteria living with several fungi. The algae and fungi share a symbiotic relationship, and together a Lichen’s properties are different than its component parts. Lichens can be extremely resilient, with different species living in arctic tundra, arid deserts, on bare rock and hanging freely from tree branches. The lichen seen above is growing on a fallen stick in the grand forest. Lichens can live an extremely long time, with one example dating to be over 8000 years old, and have a very slow growth rate of usually only 1-2 mm a year.
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A woody stem is a stem or trunk that is hard and firm compared to a herbaceous stem, which is soft and flexible. Woody stems tend to last much longer and prove to be more durable than herbacous stems, and generally do not regrow annually. The best example of a woody stem is a tree trunk, akin to the cedar trunk pictured above.
List #103
Pollen is to a plant as sperm is to a mammal. Pollen is made up of microscopic grains that each carry a male gamete and are capable of fertilizing a plant’s female ovule. It is usually a yellow or orangish powder and is produced and released from a flower’s male cone, and relies on the wind and contact with insects for transport. Above we can see several flowers containing yellow pollen towards their centers.
List #88
CAM stands for crassulacean acid metabolism. Essentially, it is a carbon-fixation version of photosynthesis certain plants have adapted to use in arid climates to conserve water. A CAM plant only takes in CO2 during nighttime (closes the stomata on its leaves in the daytime) to prevent the plant from losing water out of the stomata in the hotter dayttime (reduces evapotranspiration). The plant then stores the CO2 until the next day when its uses sunlight to photosynthesize like normal using the previous night’s CO2 supply. Above is a pineapple, which uses this process.
List #22
A Pollinator is a bug or animal that (willingly or not) moves pollen around a flower and between plants. This movement of pollen, or pollination, allows many plants to reproduce, flower, and bear fruit. Bees, like the one pictured in the flower above, are the best pollinators as they source their food from inside flowers and so spend a lot of time brushing up against them and pollen. Butterflies and hummingbirds also make great pollinators for the same reasons.
List #89
Tendrils are grown and used by parasitic, invasive and/or climbing plants to spread and provide anchor points for further growth. In some species, tendrils will curl around anchor points and other plants, called hosts, but interestingly never curl around themselves. Pictured above is the end of a long 15 foot blackberry tendril pulled out of a tree in the grand forest.
List #106
Patrick Ledoux's AP Biology Blog 