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Trees are also typically defined by height, [4] with smaller plants from 0.5 to 10 m (1.6 to 32.8 ft) being called shrubs, [5] so the minimum height of a tree is only loosely defined. [4] Large herbaceous plants such as papaya and bananas are trees in this broad sense. [2] [6]
With observation of the cellular structure of all organisms and the process of cell division and continuity of genetic material, the analysis of the structure of protoplasm and the cell wall as well as that of plastids and vacuoles – what is now known as cytology, or cell theory became firmly established.
The Greek botanist Theophrastus (c. 371 – c. 287 BC) first mentioned that the wood of trees has rings. [8] [9] In his Trattato della Pittura (Treatise on Painting), Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519) was the first person to mention that trees form rings annually and that their thickness is determined by the conditions under which they grew. [10]
The dominant tree groups today are all seed plants, the gymnosperms, which include the coniferous trees, and the angiosperms, which contain all fruiting and flowering trees. No free-sporing trees like Archaeopteris exist in the extant flora. It was long thought that the angiosperms arose from within the gymnosperms, but recent molecular ...
This is a list of the oldest-known trees, as reported in reliable sources. Definitions of what constitutes an individual tree vary. Definitions of what constitutes an individual tree vary. In addition, tree ages are derived from a variety of sources, including documented "tree-ring" ( dendrochronological ) count core samples, and from estimates.
Theophrastus's Enquiry into Plants or Historia Plantarum (Ancient Greek: Περὶ φυτῶν ἱστορία, Peri phyton historia) was, along with his mentor Aristotle's History of Animals, Pliny the Elder's Natural History and Dioscorides's De materia medica, one of the most important books of natural history written in ancient times, and like them it was influential in the Renaissance.
The idea of a tree of life arose from ancient notions of a ladder-like progression from lower into higher forms of life (such as in the Great Chain of Being).Early representations of "branching" phylogenetic trees include a "paleontological chart" showing the geological relationships among plants and animals in the book Elementary Geology, by Edward Hitchcock (first edition: 1840).
Peattie's nature writings are distinguished by a poetic and philosophical cast of mind and are scientifically scrupulous. His best known works are the two books (out of a planned trilogy) on North American trees, A Natural History of Trees of Eastern and Central North America (1950) and A Natural History of Western Trees (1953), with woodcut illustrations by Paul Landacre.