Search results
Results From The WOW.Com Content Network
Gyrocarpus americanus is a slender, deciduous tree with smooth, grey bark. The tree grows to about 12 m in height. The leaves are spirally arranged, crowded near the ends of the branches, and grow up to 150 × 120 mm in size. They are ovate, often 3-lobed, dark green above, paler and greyer below, with velvety surfaces, 3-veined from the base ...
Like all Leucadendrons, this tree is dioecious, with separate male and female plants. The fruit is a heavy woody cone, containing numerous seeds; each seed is a small nut with a silky-haired helicopter-like parachute, enabling it to disperse by
The distinctive fruits are called samaras, "maple keys", "helicopters", "whirlybirds" or "polynoses". These seeds occur in distinctive pairs each containing one seed enclosed in a "nutlet" attached to a flattened wing of fibrous, papery tissue. They are shaped to spin as they fall and to carry the seeds a considerable distance on the wind.
In some cases the seed is in the centre of the wing, as in the elms (genus Ulmus), the hoptree (Ptelea trifoliata), and the bushwillows (genus Combretum). In other cases the seed is on one side, with the wing extending to the other side, making the seed autorotate as it falls, as in the maples (genus Acer) and ash trees (genus Fraxinus). [4]
The wood is used for furniture under the name "hura". In a time when most writing pens left wet ink on the page, the trees' unripe seed capsules were sawn in half to make decorative boxes (also called pounce pots) to hold the "sand" used to dry it, hence the name 'sandbox tree'. It has been documented as a herbal remedy. [16] The seeds contain ...
Almost all other nearby species are susceptible to attack; haustoria have even been found attached to underground cables. [5] In natural settings, however, Nuytsia withdraw relatively little from each individual host, but are attached to so many other plants that the benefits for the hemiparasite are likely to be considerable.
The good news for the milkvetch plant is that they usually need wildfire to sprout — meaning dormant seeds now have a massive new habitat for a new crop of the rare shrub.
Cerbera odollam is a tree species in the family Apocynaceae commonly known as the suicide tree or pong-pong. [1] It bears a fruit known as othalanga whose seeds yield a potent poison called cerberin that has been used for trials by ordeal , [ 2 ] suicide, and poisonings.