Poland

Dew is water in the form of droplets that appears on thin, exposed objects in the morning or evening. As the exposed surface cools by radiating its heat, atmospheric moisture condenses at a rate greater than that at which it can evaporate, resulting in the formation of water droplets.

When temperatures are low enough, dew takes the form of ice; this form is called freeze (frost is, however, not frozen dew).

Because dew is related to the temperature of surfaces, in late summer it is formed most easily on surfaces which are not warmed by conducted heat from deep ground, such as grass, leaves, railings, car roofs, and bridges.

Dew should not be confused with guttation, which is the process by which plants release excess water from the tips of their leaves.

Vegetation is a very general term for the plant life; it refers to the ground cover provided by plants. It is a general term, without specific reference to particular taxa, life forms, structure, spatial extent, or any other specific botanical or geographic characteristics. It is broader than the term flora which refers exclusively to species composition. Perhaps the closest synonym is plant community, but vegetation can, and often does, refer to a wider range of spatial scales than that term does, including scales as large as the global. Primeval redwood forests, coastal mangrove stands, sphagnum bogs, desert soil crusts, roadside weed patches, wheat fields, cultivated gardens and lawns; all are encompassed by the term vegetation.

In biology, an organism is any contiguous living system (such as animal, fungus, micro-organism, or plant). In at least some form, all types of organisms are capable of response to stimuli, reproduction, growth and development, and maintenance of homeostasis as a stable whole.

An organism may be either unicellular (a single cell) or, as in the case of humans, comprise many trillions of cells grouped into specialized tissues and organs. The term multicellular (many cells) describes any organism made up of more than one cell.

All organisms living on Earth are divided into the eukaryotes and prokaryotes based on the presence or absence of true nuclei in their cells. The prokaryotes represent two separate domains, the Bacteria and Archaea. Eukaryotic organisms are characterized by the presence of a membrane-bound cell nucleus, and contain additional membrane-bound compartmentalization called organelles (such as mitochondria in animals and plastids in plants, both generally considered to be derived from endosymbiotic bacteria). Fungi, animals and plants are examples of kingdoms of organisms that are eukaryotes.

Botany, plant science(s), or plant biology (from Ancient Greek βοτάνη botane, "pasture, grass, or fodder" and that from βόσκειν boskein, "to feed or to graze"), is a discipline of biology and the science of plant life. Traditionally, the science included the study of fungi, algae, and viruses. A person engaged in the study of botany is called a botanist.

Botany covers a wide range of scientific disciplines including structure, growth, reproduction, metabolism, development, diseases, chemical properties, and evolutionary relationships among taxonomic groups. Botany began with early human efforts to identify edible, medicinal and poisonous plants, making it one of the oldest branches of science. Nowadays, botanists study about 400,000 species of living organisms.

The beginnings of modern-style classification systems can be traced to the 1500s–1600s when several attempts were made to scientifically classify plants. In the 19th and 20th centuries, major new techniques were developed for studying plants, including microscopy, chromosome counting, and analysis of plant chemistry. In the last two decades of the 20th century, DNA was used to more accurately classify plants.

The Bryopsida constitute the largest class of mosses, containing 95% of all moss species. It consists of approximately 11,500 species, common throughout the whole world.

The group is distinguished by having spore capsules with teeth that are arthrodontous; the teeth are separate from each other and jointed at the base where they attach to the opening of the capsule. These teeth are exposed when the covering operculum falls off. In other groups of mosses, the capsule is either nematodontous with an attached operculum, or else splits open without operculum or teeth.

Among the Bryopsida, the structure of the capsule (sporangium) and its pattern of development is very useful both for classifying and for identifying moss families. Most Bryopsida produce a capsule with a lid (the operculum) which falls off when the spores inside are mature and thus ready to be dispersed. The opening thus revealed is called the stoma (meaning "mouth") and is surrounded by one or two peristomes. A peristome is a ring of triangular "teeth" formed from the remnants of specially thickened cell walls. There are usually 16 such teeth in a single peristome, and in the Bryopsida the teeth are separate from each other and able to both fold in to cover the stoma as well as fold back to open the stoma. This articulation of the teeth is termed arthrodontous.

There are two basic arthrodontous peristome types. The first type is termed haplolepidous and consists of a single circle of 16 peristome teeth. This type of peristome is characteristic of subclass Dicranidae. The second type is the diplolepidous peristome found in subclasses Bryidae, Funariidae, and Timmiidae. In this type, there are two rings of peristome teeth—an inner endostome (short for endoperistome) and an exostome. The endostome is a more delicate membrane, and its teeth are aligned between the teeth of the exostome. There are a few mosses in the Bryopsida that have no peristome in their capsules. These mosses still undergo the same cell division patterns in capsule development, but the teeth do not fully develop.

Plants, also called green plants (Viridiplantae in Latin), are living organisms of the kingdom Plantae including such multicellular groups as flowering plants, conifers, ferns and mosses, as well as, depending on definition, the green algae, but not red or brown seaweeds like kelp, nor fungi or bacteria.

Green plants have cell walls with cellulose and characteristically obtain most of their energy from sunlight via photosynthesis using chlorophyll contained in chloroplasts, which gives them their green color. Some plants are parasitic and may not produce normal amounts of chlorophyll or photosynthesize. Plants are also characterized by sexual reproduction, modular and indeterminate growth, and an alternation of generations, although asexual reproduction is common, and some plants bloom only once while others bear only one bloom.

Flora is the plant life occurring in a particular region or time, generally the naturally occurring or indigenous—native plant life. The corresponding term for animal life is fauna. Flora, fauna and other forms of life such as fungi are collectively referred to as biota. Bacterial organisms, algae, and other organisms are sometimes referred to as flora, so that for example the terms bacterial flora and plant flora are used separately.

A sporangium (pl., sporangia) (modern Latin, from Greek σπόρος (sporos) ‘spore’ + αγγείον (angeion) ‘vessel’) is an enclosure in which spores are formed. It can be composed of a single cell or can be multicellular. All plants, fungi, and many other lineages form sporangia at some point in their life cycle. Sporangia can produce spores by mitosis, but in nearly all land plants and many fungi, sporangia are the site of meiosis and produce genetically distinct haploid spores.

Non-vascular plants are plants without a vascular system (xylem and phloem). Although non-vascular plants lack these particular tissues, many possess simpler tissues that are specialized for internal transport of water.

Non-vascular plants do not have a wide variety of specialized tissue types. Leafy liverworts have structures that look like leaves, but are not true leaves because they are single sheets of cells with no cuticle, stomata or internal air spaces and have no xylem or phloem. Consequently they are unable to control water loss from their tissues and are said to be poikilohydric.

All land plants have a life cycle with an alternation of generations between a diploid sporophyte and a haploid gametophyte, but in all nonvascular land plants the gametophyte generation is dominant. In these plants, the sporophytes grow from and are dependent on gametophytes for taking in water and mineral nutrients and for provision of photosynthate, the products of photosynthesis.

The term non-vascular plant is no longer used in scientific nomenclature. Non-vascular plants include two distantly related groups:

These groups are sometimes referred to as "lower plants", referring to their status as the earliest plants to evolve, but the usage is imprecise, since it may be used to include some vascular plants, the ferns and fern allies. They have also been included in the cryptogams, together with the fungi, but it is now recognized that this group is polyphyletic.

The Embryophyta or Metaphyta, are the most familiar subkingdom of green plants that form vegetation on earth. The embryophytes include hornworts, liverworts, mosses, ferns and their allies, gymnosperms and flowering plants, but exclude the green algae. The Embryophyta are informally called land plants because they live primarily in terrestrial habitats, while the related green algae are primarily aquatic. All are complex multicellular eukaryotes with specialized reproductive organs. The name derives from their innovative characteristic of nurturing the young embryo sporophyte during the early stages of its multicellular development within the tissues of the parent gametophyte. With very few exceptions, embryophytes obtain their energy by photosynthesis, that is by using the energy of sunlight to synthesize their food from carbon dioxide and water.

Bryophyte is a traditional name used to refer to all embryophytes (land plants) that do not have true vascular tissue and are therefore called 'non-vascular plants'. Some bryophytes do have specialized tissues for the transport of water; however since these do not contain lignin, they are not considered to be true vascular tissue. Currently bryophytes are thought not to be a natural or monophyletic group; however the name is convenient and remains in use as a collective term for mosses, hornworts, and liverworts. Bryophytes produce enclosed reproductive structures (gametangia and sporangia), but they produce neither flowers nor seeds, reproducing via spores. The term bryophyte comes from Greek βρύον, bryon, "tree-moss, oyster-green" + φυτόν - phyton "plant".

Mosses are a botanical division (phylum) of small, soft plants that are typically 1–10 cm (0.4–4 in) tall, though some species are much larger, like Dawsonia, the tallest moss in the world which can grow to 50 cm in height. They commonly grow close together in clumps or mats in damp or shady locations. They do not have flowers or seeds, and their simple leaves cover the thin wiry stems. At certain times mosses produce spore capsules which may appear as beak-like capsules borne aloft on thin stalks.

There are approximately 12,000 species of moss classified in the Bryophyta. The division Bryophyta formerly included not only mosses, but also liverworts and hornworts. These other two groups of bryophytes are now placed in their own divisions.

Multicellular organisms are organisms that consist of more than one cell, in contrast to single-celled organisms. To form a multicellular organism, these cells need to identify and attach to the other cells.

Only a dozen or so unicellular species have cells that can be seen individually with the naked eye. The rest of the nearly two million^{[citation needed]} visible species are multicellular. In particular all species of animals, land plants and filamentous fungi are multicellular, as are many algae. Some organisms are partially uni- and multicellular, like Dictyostelium.

Multicellular organisms —like plants, animals and brown algae— arise from a single cell and generate a many-celled organism. Pluricellular organisms are the result of many-celled individuals joining together trough colony formation, filament formation or aggregation. Pluricellularity has evolved independently in Volvox and some flagellated green algae.

Life (cf. biota) is a characteristic that distinguishes objects that have signaling and self-sustaining processes from those that do not, either because such functions have ceased (death), or else because they lack such functions and are classified as inanimate. Biology is the science concerned with the study of life.

Any contiguous living system is called an organism. Organisms undergo metabolism, maintain homeostasis, possess a capacity to grow, respond to stimuli, reproduce and, through natural selection, adapt to their environment in successive generations. More complex living organisms can communicate through various means. A diverse array of living organisms can be found in the biosphere of Earth, and the properties common to these organisms—plants, animals, fungi, protists, archaea, and bacteria—are a carbon- and water-based cellular form with complex organization and heritable genetic information.

An autotroph ("self-feeding", from the Greek autos "self" and trophe "nourishing") or "producer", is an organism that produces complex organic compounds (such as carbohydrates, fats, and proteins) from simple substances present in its surroundings, generally using energy from light (photosynthesis) or inorganic chemical reactions (chemosynthesis). They are the producers in a food chain, such as plants on land or algae in water. They are able to make their own food, and do not need a living energy or organic carbon source. Autotrophs can reduce carbon dioxide to make organic compounds, creating a store of chemical energy. Most autotrophs use water as the reducing agent, but some can use other hydrogen compounds such as hydrogen sulfide. Phototrophs, a type of autotroph, convert physical energy from sunlight (in case of green plants) into chemical energy in the form of reduced carbon.

Autotrophs can be phototrophs or chemotrophs. Phototrophs use light as an energy source, while chemotrophs utilize electron donors as a source of energy, whether from organic or inorganic sources; however in the case of autotrophs, these electron donors come from inorganic chemical sources. Such chemotrophs are lithotrophs. Lithotrophs make use of inorganic compounds, such as hydrogen sulfide, elemental sulfur, ammonium and ferrous iron, as reducing agents for biosynthesis and chemical energy storage. Photoautotrophs and lithoautotrophs use a portion of the ATP produced during photosynthesis or the oxidation of inorganic compounds to reduce NADP⁺ to NADPH in order to form organic compounds.

The common names of plants often vary from region to region, which is why most plant encyclopedias refer to plants using their scientific names: binomials, or "Latin" names.

Many plants have several common names, and many common names refer to several distinct plants. This list includes garden plants as well as weeds.

This is not a complete list. Most of the common names here so far are regional names in use in North America.

sterculla lychnophora

Macro photography (or photomacrography or macrography, and sometimes macrophotography) is extreme close-up photography, usually of very small subjects, in which the size of the subject in the photograph is greater than life size (though macrophotography technically refers to the art of making very large photographs). By some definitions, a macro photograph is one in which the size of the subject on the negative or image sensor is life size or greater. However in other uses it refers to a finished photograph of a subject at greater than life size.

The ratio of the subject size on the film plane (or sensor plane) to the actual subject size is known as the reproduction ratio. Likewise, a macro lens is classically a lens capable of reproduction ratios greater than 1:1, although it often refers to any lens with a large reproduction ratio, despite rarely exceeding 1:1.

Apart from technical photography and film-based processes, where the size of the image on the negative or image sensor is the subject of discussion, the finished print or on-screen image more commonly lends a photograph its macro status. For example, when producing a 6×4 inch (15×10 cm) print using 135 format film or sensor, a life-size result is possible with a lens having only a 1:4 reproduction ratio.

Reproduction ratios much greater than 1:1 are considered to be photomicrography, often achieved with digital microscope (photomicrography should not be confused with microphotography, the art of making very small photographs, such as for microforms).

A sporophyte is the diploid generation of a plant or alga that has a double set of chromosomes. All land plants, and some algae, have life cycles in which a multicellular haploid gametophyte generation alternates with a multicellular diploid generation. In the Gymnosperms and flowering plants (Angiosperms), the sporophyte generation is the most prominent phase, comprising the familiar green plant with its roots, stem, leaves and cones or flowers. In the flowering plants, the gametophytes are very reduced in size, and are represented by the pollen and the embryo sac.

The sporophyte produces spores (hence the name), by meiosis. These meiospores develop into a gametophyte. Both the spores and the resulting gametophyte are haploid, meaning they only have one set of homologous chromosomes. The mature gametophyte produces male or female gametes (or both) by mitosis. The fusion of male and female gametes produces a diploid zygote which develops into a new sporophyte. This cycle is known as alternation of generations or alternation of phases.