edgepedia

Seed plants

3,306 articles

Euphorbia cyparissias

Euphorbia cyparissias, cypress or graveyard spurge, a rhizomatous Euphorbiaceae perennial native to Europe and NW Türkiye, introduced across North America, Japan, and New Zealand, reproducing by seed and creeping roots.

Euphorbia heterophylla

Euphorbia heterophylla (wild poinsettia, Mexican fireplant, milkweed) is an annual latex-bearing Euphorbiaceae herb native to tropical America, now a pantropical soybean and maize weed with documented ALS, glyphosate, and PPO herbicide resistance.

Euphorbia hirta

Euphorbia hirta (asthma plant, tawa-tawa), an annual Euphorbiaceae herb native to tropical America, used in traditional medicine for asthma, diarrhea, and dengue; pharmacology remains preclinical.

Euphorbia milii

Euphorbia milii, crown of thorns or Christ plant, is a spiny semisucculent Madagascan shrub in Euphorbiaceae grown for red, pink, white, or yellow bracts; its toxic latex causes dermatitis and eye injury, and its diterpenoids show molluscicidal and pharmacological activity.

Euphorbiaceae

Euphorbiaceae, the spurge family (Euphorbiaceae Juss., 1789), is a Malpighiales family of about 230 genera and 6,500+ species with unisexual flowers, latex, and the unique cyathium; includes Hevea rubber, cassava, and castor oil plants.

Euphrasia

Euphrasia, the eyebrights, is a genus of semi-parasitic annual or perennial herbs or subshrubs in Orobanchaceae, first published by Linnaeus in 1753 and notorious for how hard its species are to tell apart.

European spruce bark beetle

European spruce bark beetle (Ips typographus, eight-toothed spruce bark beetle), a Scolytinae pest of Norway spruce; mass attacks with blue stain fungus kill spruce, and it is managed by salvage logging, debarking, and pheromone methods.

Euryale ferox

Euryale ferox (makhana, fox nut, gorgon nut, prickly water lily) is the only extant Euryale species, a spiny aquatic Nymphaeaceae whose popped seeds are a major cash crop of north Bihar, India, with 76.9% carbohydrate and 9.7% protein.

Eurycoma longifolia

Eurycoma longifolia, tongkat ali or pasak bumi, is a Southeast Asian Simaroubaceae tree whose root is used as a traditional male sexual health and testosterone supplement; marker compound eurycomanone.

Euterpe edulis

Euterpe edulis (palmito-juçara, juçara) is a solitary Atlantic Forest palm, Vulnerable (VU) from lethal palm heart extraction; its açaí-like fruit is now harvested as a sustainable alternative.

Evergreen

Evergreen plants retain green leaves or needles year round, unlike deciduous plants that shed annually. Covers conifers and broadleaf evergreens, leaf economics, water use, drought strategy, and landscape uses.

Evergreen forest

An evergreen forest is a forest whose trees keep their leaves year-round, occurring as tropical rainforest, temperate rainforest, and the boreal conifer forests, or taiga.

Fabaceae

Fabaceae (Leguminosae), the legume family: third-largest angiosperm family, ~751 genera and ~19,500 species, six subfamilies, pod fruits, rhizobial nitrogen fixation, and major food crops like soybean, pea, and bean.

Fabales

Fabales is an order of flowering plants with four families: Fabaceae, Polygalaceae, Quillajaceae, and Surianaceae. The legumes alone hold over 95 percent of its more than 20,000 species.

Fagaceae

Fagaceae (beech family), oaks Quercus, beeches Fagus, chestnuts Castanea; 8 genera, ~1,000 Northern Hemisphere tree species; nuts in woody cupules; major hardwood timbers.

Fagales

Fagales (Engler, 1892) is an order of woody flowering plants in the fabid rosids, with seven families including Betulaceae, Fagaceae, Juglandaceae, Nothofagaceae, Casuarinaceae, Myricaceae, and Ticodendraceae; about 1,325 species, wind-pollinated, Cretaceous origin, NCBI taxonomy ID 3502.

Fagopyrum

Fagopyrum (buckwheat genus), Polygonaceae, ca. 25-30 species mostly from southern China and the Himalaya; includes cultivated common buckwheat F. esculentum and Tartary buckwheat F. tataricum, split into cymosum and urophyllum groups.

Fagopyrum tataricum

Fagopyrum tataricum, Tartary or bitter buckwheat (तिते फापर), is a self-pollinating Himalayan pseudocereal grown by the Yi people since the 2nd century BC, distinguished from common buckwheat by rutin levels up to 81 mg/g and bitter grain.

Fagus

Fagus (beech) is a genus of about 10–15 deciduous Fagaceae trees of the temperate Northern Hemisphere, from Europe, Asia, and North America to Mexico, with trigonous nuts and a fossil record back to the early Paleocene/Eocene.

Fagus crenata

Fagus crenata, the Japanese beech, is a deciduous beech-family tree endemic to Japan, growing 15 to 30 meters tall and dominating cool-temperate forests from Kyushu to Hokkaido.

Fagus grandifolia

Fagus grandifolia (American beech), the only North American Fagus, a slow-growing shade-tolerant deciduous tree of eastern North America, 20-30 m, living 300-400 years, threatened chiefly by beech bark disease.

Fagus orientalis

Fagus orientalis, the Oriental beech, is a large deciduous tree of the beech family Fagaceae, native from southeastern Bulgaria across Türkiye to the Caucasus and the Hyrcanian forests of Iran.

Fagus sylvatica

Fagus sylvatica, European beech, is a large deciduous Fagaceae tree native from southern Scandinavia to Sicily and Spain to northwest Turkey, dominating Central European natural forests, with mast fruiting every 5–8 years and around 250 wood usages.

Faidherbia albida

Faidherbia albida (apple-ring acacia, winter thorn; formerly Acacia albida) is the sole species of its genus, a dryland African leguminous tree with reverse leaf phenology, leafless in the rains, widely used in agroforestry to raise crop yields and soil fertility.

Falcaria vulgaris

Falcaria vulgaris (sickleweed, longleaf) is a glaucous Apiaceae herb native from Central Europe and the Mediterranean to Central Asia, introduced and invasive in North American rangelands, with traditional medicinal uses.

Falcataria

Falcataria is a genus of three fast-growing, nitrogen-fixing legume trees native from eastern Malesia to the Santa Cruz Islands. Its best-known species, Falcataria falcata (formerly F. moluccana, albizia, batai), is planted for timber and shade but invades Pacific forests.

Falcataria moluccana

Falcataria moluccana, also called Falcataria falcata, Moluccan albizia, batai, or sengon, is a fast-growing nitrogen-fixing Fabaceae tree native to the Moluccas, New Guinea, and Solomon Islands, widely planted for timber yet invasive in Hawaii.

Fallopia multiflora

Fallopia multiflora (何首乌, he shou wu; syn. Polygonum multiflorum, Reynoutria multiflora) is a Polygonaceae twining herb whose root tuber is the TCM tonic Heshouwu, used for anti-aging and hair-darkening but a leading herbal cause of idiosyncratic liver injury since 1996.

Farro

Farro is an Italian term for grains of three hulled wheat species, einkorn, emmer, and spelt; in Italy it especially means emmer, the "true" farro.

Fatsia japonica (ヤツデ)

Fatsia japonica (ヤツデ, yatsude), Japanese aralia or glossy-leaved paper plant, an evergreen Araliaceae shrub from Korea and Japan with 9-lobed glossy leaves, October-November white flowers, black fruit, and the Hedera hybrid ×Fatshedera.