Botany questions

Tree ferns of the Cyathea family develop a trunk, which reaches up to 20 m in height and 50 cm in diameter.

The mulberry is a significant fiber crop in the history of paper. It was used for papermaking in China by around 100 AD. The paper recipe used by Cai Lun included plant bark fibres, rags and fishing nets. Early paper makers particularly valued Mulberry for producing high quality paper. Washi, a Japanese handcrafted paper, is made with the inner bark, which is pounded and mixed with water to produce a paste, which is dried into sheets.

Anacardium excelsum, the wild cashew or espavé, is a tree in the flowering plant family Anacardiaceae. The tree is common in the tropical and subtropical dry broadleaf forests of Pacific and Atlantic watersheds of Central and South America, extending as far north as Guatemala and south into Ecuador. When uncooked, the fruit (both the nut and the surrounding fleshy part) is highly toxic to humans. It may, however, be eaten after it is roasted.

Amanita muscaria contains several biologically active agents, at least one of which, muscimol, is known to be psychoactive. Ibotenic acid, a neurotoxin, serves as a prodrug to muscimol, with approximately 10–20% converting to muscimol after ingestion. An active dose in adults is approximately 6 mg muscimol or 30 to 60 mg ibotenic acid; this is typically about the amount found in one cap of Amanita muscaria. Spring and summer mushrooms have been reported to contain up to 10 times more ibotenic acid and muscimol than autumn fruitings.

Pedanius Dioscorides (40 – 90 AD) was a Greek physician, pharmacologist, botanist, and author of De Materia Medica - a 5-volume Greek encyclopedia about herbal medicine and related medicinal substances (a pharmacopeia), that was widely read for more than 1,500 years. He was employed as a physician in the Roman army.

Conifers, or cone-bearing trees, evolved to have needles that retain more water and seeds that could hang out until there was enough moisture to take root. It may not seem like it, but needles are leaves. They do the same job that broad leaves do—capture sunlight, “inhale” carbon dioxide, and “exhale” oxygen—providing the tree with food and air for us to breath. Instead of shedding every fall, though, needles can last three or four years!

The amoeba is a single-celled organism that can cause a rare infection of the brain called primary amoebic meningoencephalitis, also known as PAM, which is usually fatal. ... The amoeba got its nickname because it starts to destroy brain tissue once it reaches the brain, after it is forced up there in a rush of water.

The quince is the sole member of the genus Cydonia in the family Rosaceae. It is a deciduous tree that bears a pome fruit, similar in appearance to a pear, and bright golden-yellow when mature. Throughout history the cooked fruit has been used as food, but the tree is also grown for its attractive pale pink blossoms and other ornamental qualities.

The largest fish in the world, the whale shark, is an endangered species found in most of the world’s tropical waters. Like the megamouth sharks and the basking shark, whale sharks are filter feeders and their diet consists almost exclusively of plankton. Because of this they’re completely harmless to humans, and diving with whale sharks has become a popular ecotourism attraction in several countries. The largest individuals can weigh over 30 tonnes and give birth to 300 pups.

Nelumbo is a genus of aquatic plants with large, showy flowers. Members are commonly called lotus, though "lotus" is a name also applied to various other plants and plant groups, including the unrelated genus Lotus. Members outwardly resemble those in the family Nymphaeaceae ("water lilies"), but Nelumbo is actually very distant to Nymphaeaceae.