ANNUAL An Annual plant does not live beyond one year. It normally starts from seed, produces flowers, seeds and fruits and then dies. You can compare Annual to biennial and perennial.     Click on Back in your browser to return to previous page.                             ASEXUAL REPRODUCTION This is reproduction involving only one parent, as it makes an exact copy of itself. It does not involve two sexes, and could be described as the opposite of sexual reproduction. Asexual reproduction can occur by vegetative reproduction e.g. in some plants or asexual spore formation, e.g. in some fungi reproduction.   Click on Back in your browser to return to previous page.                 BIENNIAL (sounds like "bye-enn-ee-al) A plant that takes 2 years to complete its life cycle. During the first year it stores up food in its roots and other organs. During the second year, the plant uses up its food stores to produce flowers, fruit and seed. Then it dies. You can compare biennial to annual and perennial.     Click on Back in your browser to return to previous page.                   CARNIVOROUS Something that eats animals.   Click on Back in your browser to return to previous page.                 COMPOUND EYE The compound eye is made up of hundreds of tiny little lenses. Each of the lenses can pick up light, and so working together, they can detect movement really well.       Click on Back in your browser to return to previous page.                   CONIFEROUS (sounds like "con-if-er-us") Conifers are plants that bear their seeds in cones.   Click on Back in your browser to return to previous page.                   COPPICING - (sounds like "cop-iss-ing") This is when a person cuts the trunk of a tree, at its base, and so encourages the growth of lots of shoots. The result is many thin woody shoot-like branches, which can be used to make fencing, baskets and other useful items. Coppicing also allows more sunlight to reach the forest floor, and so allows all sort of other plants, such as wild flowers, to spring up.     Click on Back in your browser to return to previous page.                   DECIDUOUS (sounds like "dess-id-you-us") A tree which loses its leaves at a particular season. In Britain, many trees lose their leaves in the autumn. Most broad-leaved trees like oak and beech are deciduous. Shedding leaves helps a plant to save water, by reducing loss of water vapour (by transpiration).   Click on Back in your browser to return to previous page.                   EGG In the plant world, this is the female sex cell, also known as an ovum. It is found inside the ovule and it develops into a seed.   Click on Back in your browser to return to previous page.                     EPIPHYTE (sounds like "epp-if-ite") A plant that grows on the surface of another plant, such as a tree, or on another structure such as a wall or telegraph pole, which it uses as a support. The epiphyte does not take any nutrient from this support. Many mosses and orchids are epiphytic.   Click on Back in your browser to return to previous page.                       EVERGREEN The leaves on evergreen plants stay on all year round. Their leaves can last three to four years and often have a dark, waxy skin to help the tree to save water.   Click on Back in your browser to return to previous page.                       FERTILISATION The process of sexual reproduction when a female and a male sex cell fuse with each other.   Click on Back in your browser to return to previous page.                       FRUIT A fruit contains a seed or several seeds. The function of the fruit is to disperse the seed. The fruit grows from the ovary once it has been fertilised. The fruit can be fleshy (for example apple, tomato, and raspberry) or dry (for example dandelion or clematis). Seeds that are spread by animals are soft and juicy, to tempt the animal to eat them. If they are spread by the wind, they are light, hard and dry. Such fruits can have light feathery parachutes to help carry the seeds off in the wind. Many fruits, such as these, have unusual structures, which we might not immediately recognise as fruits.   Click on Back in your browser to return to previous page.