Plants questions

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

Moles are pests to agriculture and gardening. However, they do not eat plant roots; they only cause damage indirectly when they dig through soil to find earthworms and other small invertebrates in the soil.

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.

Etlingera is a genus of Indo-Pacific terrestrial and perennial herbs in the ginger family, Zingiberaceae consisting of more than 100 species found in tropical regions of the Old World. Some of the larger species have leafy shoots reaching almost 10 metres high, and the bases of these shoots are so stout as to seem almost woody. Others of the species grow as clumps of leafy shoots; while others have such long creeping Rhizomes that each of their leafy shoots can be more than a metre apart.

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.

Watermelons are only 92 percent water.The title of most water-filled fruit or vegetable, by contrast, is a tie between the cucumber and iceberg lettuce, both with 96 percent water content. In fact vegetables win, hands down, in this contest as among commonly consumed fruits and vegetables the top eight are vegetables: cucumber (96 percent), slightly less; iceberg lettuce, celery, radish, zucchini, red tomatoes, and green cabbage.

Grass trees (X. australis) epitomise the Australian bush: they’re beautiful, ancient, hardy, thrive in nutrient-poor soils and respond to wildfire by flowering profusely. All 66 species of grass tree are endemic to (only found in) Australia and Tasmania. Its trunk can grow up to several metres tall and is often branched. The crown of leaves of X. australis will be almost spherical in shape.The leaves crown the trunk in a crowded whorl of long, wiry leaves. Grass trees are often very long-lived with some are estimated to be 350 to 450 years old.

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.