3,306 articles
Flattened rice
Flattened rice, also called poha, aval, or chiura, is parboiled dehusked rice pressed into dry flakes that rehydrate in minutes. Sold in thin and thick grades, it is a South Asian breakfast staple and often iron-fortified.
Flax
Flax (Linum usitatissimum, from wild L. bienne) is a founder crop grown for linen fibre and linseed. Fibre types are tall and unbranched, oil types short and branched; seeds hold 40-45% oil, over 50% linolenic acid, and flax is the richest known lignan source.
Flint corn
Flint corn (Zea mays indurate), also called Indian corn, is hard-vitreous-endosperm maize with convex kernels; popcorn is a flint type. Lower yielding than dent corn but higher in protein and digestible amino acids, it dominates Brazilian and high-latitude production.
Flour
Flour, powder milled from cereal grains, chiefly wheat endosperm; wholemeal keeps bran and germ. Covers milling history, protein grades, gluten, fortification, and whole-grain health evidence.
Flower
Flower: the reproductive structure of angiosperms, bearing anthers and stigma for pollen transfer and seed formation. Over 80% of flowering plant species need animal pollination; explosive early diversification produced over 80% of extant angiosperm orders.
Flowering plant
Flowering plant (angiosperm): seed plants with ovules enclosed in an ovary that becomes a fruit. 250,000+ species versus ~1,000 gymnosperms; ANA grade basal; Mesangiospermae hold ~97% of species; classified by APG systems.
Forestiera
Forestiera, known as swampprivet, is a genus of dioecious shrubs and small trees in the olive family, native from the southern United States to Ecuador.
Forsythia
Forsythia (golden bells, lian qiao shu) is a genus of about 11 East Asian deciduous shrubs in Oleaceae with yellow early-spring flowers on bare branches; most garden clones derive from the hybrid F. × intermedia, and flowers are heterostylous.
Forsythia suspensa
Forsythia suspensa (连翘), weeping forsythia, Oleaceae shrub native to China; golden spring flowers on pendulous hollow-pith branches; source of TCM drug Forsythiae Fructus (lianqiao); parent of Forsythia × intermedia.
Fortingall Yew
Fortingall Yew: ancient common yew (Taxus baccata) in Fortingall churchyard, Perthshire, Scotland; often called Britain's or Europe's oldest tree, estimated 2,000-3,000 years old, girth 52 ft in 1769, now fragmented, reported changing sex in 2015.
Fossil and extinct gnetophytes
Fossil and extinct gnetophytes are Mesozoic and Cenozoic plant fossils assigned to the gnetophyte lineage, whose living relatives are Ephedra, Gnetum, and Welwitschia; their diversity peaked in the Early Cretaceous.
Fossil Araucariaceae
Fossil Araucariaceae is the fossil record of the southern conifer family that includes the monkey puzzle tree, kauris, and the Wollemi pine, once widespread across Gondwana in the Jurassic and Early Cretaceous.
Fossil Podocarpaceae
Fossil Podocarpaceae is the fossil record of the podocarp conifers, preserved as cones and wood from the Early Cretaceous onward, when the family ranged far beyond its modern tropical distribution.
Fouquieria fasciculata
Fouquieria fasciculata (ocotillo, árbol del barril, tzitcó) is a Vulnerable, CITES Appendix I caudex shrub of southern Hidalgo, Mexico, in subg. Bronnia with F. purpusii, bearing white ten-stamened winter flowers.
Four-leaf clover
Four-leaf clover: a rare four-leaflet variant of normally trifoliate clover, mostly white clover (Trifolium repens); recessive trait plus environment, found about 1 in 5,000, a luck symbol.
Foxtail (diaspore)
Foxtail (diaspore): barbed grass seed-dispersal units from Hordeum jubatum and Setaria species whose one-way awns self-bury in soil but lodge in animals, migrating through tissue; removal is the only treatment.
Foxtail millet
Foxtail millet (Setaria italica), also called Italian or German millet, is a C4 cereal domesticated in northern China about 8,700 years ago, grown for grain and hay, with high water-use efficiency and about 12.3 g protein per 100 g.
Fragaria vesca
Fragaria vesca, woodland or wild strawberry, alpine strawberry, is a diploid Rosaceae perennial herb with 240 Mb genome, reference genome for Fragaria, and diploid progenitor of cultivated Fragaria × ananassa.
Frangula alnus
Frangula alnus (alder buckthorn, glossy buckthorn; syn. Rhamnus frangula), a Rhamnaceae shrub native from Europe to Central Siberia and NW Africa, used for laxative bark and gunpowder charcoal, and a highly invasive North American weed.
Frankincense
Frankincense, also called olibanum, is the aromatic gum resin tapped from Boswellia trees in Arabia, Africa, and India, burned as incense since antiquity and traded across the ancient Mediterranean world.
Fraser fir
Fraser fir, also called she-balsam, is an evergreen conifer native to high elevations in the southern Appalachian Mountains and a leading North American Christmas tree species.
Fraxinus
Fraxinus (ash), genus of about 43 Oleaceae tree species of the Northern Hemisphere with pinnate leaves and winged samara fruits; threatened by ash dieback and emerald ash borer, valued for elastic timber.
Fraxinus americana
Fraxinus americana, white ash or American white ash, is an eastern North American hardwood tree prized for shock-resistant timber used in baseball bats and tool handles; now critically endangered from emerald ash borer.
Fraxinus excelsior
Fraxinus excelsior, common or European ash, a large European deciduous timber tree in Oleaceae, native Europe to Iran, IUCN Near Threatened due to ash dieback (Hymenoscyphus fraxineus) and threatened by emerald ash borer.
Fraxinus ornus
Fraxinus ornus (manna ash, flowering ash) is a Mediterranean deciduous ash tree grown in Sicily and Calabria for manna, a mannitol-rich sweet bark exudate used as a mild laxative; IUCN Least Concern.
Fraxinus pennsylvanica
Fraxinus pennsylvanica, green ash (also red ash), a dioecious North American ash tree of floodplains and urban plantings, 50-70 ft tall, now Critically Endangered from emerald ash borer.
Fred the Tree
Fred the Tree is an Australian pine (Casuarina) growing out of the roadbed of the abandoned Old Seven Mile Bridge in the Florida Keys, a celebrated local landmark.
Freekeh (فريكة)
Freekeh (فريكة), also farik or frik, is smoky roasted green durum wheat from Levantine and North African cuisine; name from Arabic farak, to rub; protein 11–15%, fiber 12–19%, contains gluten.
Freesia
Freesia (Freesia Eckl. ex Klatt) is a genus of 16 cormous Iridaceae species native from Kenya to South Africa, named for Friedrich Freese; fragrant cut flowers, over 110 million stems sold yearly in the UK.
Fridericia
Fridericia Mart. (Bignoniaceae, tribe Bignonieae) is a genus of about 62 neotropical liana species from Mexico to tropical America, formerly including most of Arrabidaea; best known for the medicinal, dye plant Fridericia chica.