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43-784: Chamaenerion angustifolium is a perennial herbaceous flowering plant in the willowherb family Onagraceae . It is known in North America as fireweed and in Britain and Ireland as rosebay willowherb . It is also known by the synonyms Chamerion angustifolium and Epilobium angustifolium . It is native throughout the temperate Northern Hemisphere , including large parts of the boreal forests . The reddish stems of this herbaceous perennial are usually simple, erect, smooth, 0.5–2.5 metres ( 1 + 1 ⁄ 2 –8 feet) high with scattered alternate leaves . The leaves are spirally arranged, entire, narrowly lanceolate, and pinnately veined,

86-443: A century plant can live for 80 years and grow 30 meters tall before flowering and dying. However, most perennials are polycarpic (or iteroparous ), flowering over many seasons in their lifetime. Perennials invest more resources than annuals into roots, crowns, and other structures that allow them to live from one year to the next. They often have a competitive advantage because they can commence their growth and leaf out earlier in

129-940: A photolyase and the other, a protein involved in nucleotide excision repair ). Perennials that are cultivated include: woody plants like fruit trees grown for their edible fruits; shrubs and trees grown as landscaping ornamentals ; herbaceous food crops like asparagus , rhubarb , strawberries ; and subtropical plants not hardy in colder areas such as tomatoes , eggplant , and coleus (which are treated as annuals in colder areas). Perennials also include plants grown for their flowering and other ornamental value including bulbs (like tulips, narcissus, and gladiolus); lawn grass, and other groundcovers , (such as periwinkle and Dichondra ). Each type of plant must be separated differently; for example, plants with fibrous root systems like daylilies, Siberian iris, or grasses can be pried apart with two garden forks inserted back to back, or cut by knives. However, plants such as bearded irises have

172-424: A disturbed area. Once seedlings are established, the plant quickly reproduces and covers the disturbed area via seeds and rhizomes. It is somewhat adapted to fire as well and so can prevent the reintroduction of fire to the landscape. Fireweed is well adapted to seed in severely burned areas as well, because the mineral soil that is exposed due to the removal of organic soil layers provides a good seedbed. In Britain

215-488: A good source of vitamin C and provitamin A . The Denaʼina add fireweed to their dogs' food. Fireweed is also a medicine of the Upper Inlet Dena'ina, who treat pus -filled boils or cuts by placing a piece of the raw stem on the afflicted area. This is said to draw the pus out of the cut or boil and prevents a cut with pus in it from healing over too quickly. The root can be roasted after scraping off

258-631: A large patch. This species has been placed in the genus Chamaenerion (sometimes given as Chamerion ) rather than Epilobium based on several morphological distinctions: spiral (rather than opposite or whorled) leaf arrangement; absence (rather than presence) of a hypanthium ; subequal stamens (rather than stamens in two unequal whorls); zygomorphic (rather than actinomorphic) stamens and stigma . Under this taxonomic arrangement, Chamaenerion and Epilobium are monophyletic sister genera. Two subspecies are recognized as valid: The generic name Chamaenerion means "dwarf rosebay" in allusion to

301-461: A protagonist attempting to restore an old garden that used "Rose Pink Willow Herb" as an ornamental plant and mentions its notoriety for growing on abandoned bomb sites. Cicely Mary Barker 's 1948 book Flower Fairies of the Wayside included an illustration of 'The Rose-Bay Willow-Herb Fairy', with the accompanying verse "On the breeze my fluff is blown; So my airy seeds are sown. Where the earth

344-470: A root system of rhizomes; these root systems should be planted with the top of the rhizome just above ground level, with leaves from the following year showing. The point of dividing perennials is to increase the amount of a single breed of plant in your garden. In the United States more than 900 million dollars worth of potted herbaceous perennial plants were sold in 2019. Although most of humanity

387-479: A very few (e.g. Zostera ) occurring in shallow sea water. Herbaceous perennial plants are particularly dominant in conditions too fire-prone for trees and shrubs, e.g., most plants on prairies and steppes are perennials; they are also dominant on tundra too cold for tree growth. Nearly all forest plants are perennials, including trees and shrubs. Perennial plants are usually better long-term competitors, especially under stable, resource-poor conditions. This

430-399: Is a pioneer species that quickly colonizes open areas with little competition, such as the sites of forest fires and forest clearings . Plants grow and flower as long as there is open space and plenty of light. Fireweed reaches its average peak colonization after five years and then begins to be replaced as trees and brush grow larger. When a new fire or other disturbance occurs that opens up

473-418: Is a tall, perennial plant, reaching up to 2 metres in height. The robust stems are profusely hairy with soft spreading hairs. The hairy leaves are 2–12 cm long and 0.5–3.5 cm wide. They are long and thin and are widest below the middle. They have sharply toothed edges and no stalk. The large flowers have four notched petals . These are purple-pink and are usually 10–16 mm long. The stigma

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516-441: Is burnt and sad, I will come to make it glad. All forlorn and ruined places, All neglected empty spaces, I can cover—only think!— With a mass of rosy pink." Rosebay Willowherb was voted the county flower of London in 2002 following a poll by the wild plant conservation charity Plantlife . Fireweed is the floral emblem of Yukon. Perennial plant Perennials (especially small flowering plants ) that grow and bloom over

559-498: Is crucial in the recovery time of disturbed lands. In many cases, fireweed establishes itself on these disturbed lands, but implementing the introduction of fireweed to a disturbed area as a management practice could prove useful in speeding up the recovery of disturbed lands. Disturbed and burned over lands are generally unpleasant to look at and pose a risk to habitats and nearby communities because of their susceptibility to mass wasting events. Fireweed can quickly establish itself across

602-783: Is due to the development of larger root systems which can access water and soil nutrients deeper in the soil and to earlier emergence in the spring. Annual plants have an advantage in disturbed environments because of their faster growth and reproduction rates. Each section contains a short list of species related to that topic, these are an example as the true lists would fill several books. Perennials grown for their decorative flowers include very many species and types. Some examples include: The majority of fruit bearing plants are perennial even in temperate climates. Examples include: Many herbs are perennial, including these examples: Many vegetable plants can grow as perennials in tropical climates, but die in cold weather. Examples of some of

645-483: Is fed by the re-sowing of the seeds of annual grain crops, (either naturally or by the manual efforts of humans), perennial crops provide numerous benefits. Perennial plants often have deep, extensive root systems which can hold soil to prevent erosion , capture dissolved nitrogen before it can contaminate ground and surface water, and out-compete weeds (reducing the need for herbicides ). These potential benefits of perennials have resulted in new attempts to increase

688-636: Is not considered palatable, but the young shoots and leaves can be cooked and eaten. The young flowers are also edible, and the stems of older plants can be split to extract the edible raw pith . Additionally, the leaves can be used for tea. Traditionally the young shoots are collected in the spring by Native American and Siberian people and mixed with other greens. As the plant matures, the leaves become tough and somewhat bitter. Fireweed petals are made into jelly, and mature leaves are dried for use as tea. Roots are traditionally eaten raw by Siberian Native people. When properly prepared soon after picking they are

731-530: Is often used to re-establish vegetation. It is also grown as an ornamental plant . A white form, C. angustifolium 'Album', is listed by the Royal Horticultural Society. Because of its rapid establishment on disturbed land, fireweed can be used for land management purposes. Events such as logging, fires and mass wasting can leave the land barren and without vegetation. This causes the land to be more susceptible to erosion because of

774-429: Is too cold or dry. In many parts of the world, seasonality is expressed as wet and dry periods rather than warm and cold periods, and deciduous perennials lose their leaves in the dry season. Some perennial plants are protected from wildfires because they have underground roots that produce adventitious shoots, bulbs, crowns , or stems ; other perennials like trees and shrubs may have thick cork layers that protect

817-445: Is white and has four lobes. The sepals are green. The native range of the species includes North Africa, most of Europe up to southern Sweden , and parts of Asia. It is absent from much of Scandinavia and north-west Scotland . It has been introduced to North America and Australia. It typically grows in wet or damp habitats without dense tree-cover up to 2,500 metres above sea-level. Common habitats include marshland , ditches and

860-470: Is ✶/↓ K4 C4 A4+4 or 4+0 Ğ(4). The upright, reddish-brown linear seed capsule splits from the apex and curls open. It bears many minute brown seeds, about 300 to 400 per capsule and 80,000 per plant. The seeds have silky hairs to aid wind dispersal and are very easily spread by the wind, often becoming a weed and a dominant species on disturbed ground. Once established, the plants also spread extensively by underground roots, an individual plant eventually forming

903-717: The Yukon , the flowers from fireweed are made into jelly. The honey produced from fireweed is highly valued for its quality. Most fireweed honey is produced in locations in cool climates, such as the Pacific Northwest in the United States and Scandinavian countries in Europe. Fireweed's natural variation in ploidy has prompted its use in scientific studies of the possible effects of polyploidy on adaptive potential and species diversification. Because fireweed can colonize disturbed sites, even following an old oil spill, it

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946-475: The astronomical symbol for the planet Jupiter . Perennial plants can be short-lived (only a few years) or long-lived. They include a wide assortment of plant groups from non-flowering plants like ferns and liverworts to highly diverse flowering plants like orchids , grasses , and woody plants . Plants that flower and fruit only once and then die are termed monocarpic or semelparous ; these species may live for many years before they flower. For example,

989-406: The 13th century). They use it as highly prized medicinal herb too. The popularity of fireweed tea perhaps stems from the similarity of its production to that of common black tea ( Camellia sinensis ), leading to a richly flavoured and deeply coloured herbal tea, with no caffeine, it is commercially sold in a blend with mint or thyme. Fireweed tea is high in iron, copper, potassium and calcium. In

1032-524: The Second World War. Bears and elk are known to favor the plant as food. The flowers are visited by a wide variety of insects (the generalised pollination syndrome ). Some species in the insect order Lepidoptera frequently use the willowherb as their primary larval host-plant, examples including the elephant hawk moth ( Deilephila elpenor ), bedstraw hawk moth ( Hyles gallii ), and the white-lined sphinx moth ( Hyles lineata ). The plant

1075-446: The advantage of generating larger seedlings that can better compete with other plants. Perennials also produce seeds over many years. An important aspect of cold acclimation is overexpression of DNA repair genes. In Thinopyrum intermedium a perennial relative of common wheat Triticum aestivum , conditions of freezing stress were shown to be associated with large increases in expression of two DNA repair genes (one gene product

1118-515: The banks of rivers and streams. It flowers from June to September, with a peak in July and August. The flowers are visited by many types of insects, and can be characterized by a generalized pollination syndrome . A number of insects feed on the leaves including the elephant hawkmoth , Deilephila elpenor . Epilobium hirsutum inhabits damp and waste places, river-sides and ditches. The plant shows glandular trichomes . They are unicellular, without

1161-510: The dormancy period is over and new growth begins. In climates that are warm all year long, perennials may grow continuously. Annuals which complete their life cycle in one growing season, in contrast with perennials, produce seeds as the next generation and die; the seeds may survive cold or dry periods or germinate soon after dispersal depending on the climate. Some perennials retain their foliage year-round; these are evergreen perennials. Deciduous perennials shed all their leaves part of

1204-509: The flowering plants returning to the site of a bonfire inside the Old Forest . As the first plant to colonise waste ground, fireweed is often mentioned in postwar British literature. The children's novel Fireweed is set during the Blitz and features two runaway teenagers who meet on bomb sites where fireweed is growing profusely. Another children's novel, A Reflection of Rachel features

1247-460: The ground to light again, the seeds germinate. Some areas with heavy seed counts in the soil can, after burning, be covered with pure dense stands of this species and when in flower the landscape is turned into fields of color. Fireweed is an effective colonizer; it may not be present until after a fire has moved through a landscape. Because of its very high dispersal capacity, "propagule pressure" from its regional presence will let it quickly colonize

1290-541: The growing season, and can grow taller than annuals. In doing so they can better compete for space and collect more light. Perennials typically grow structures that allow them to adapt to living from one year to the next through a form of vegetative reproduction rather than seeding. These structures include bulbs , tubers , woody crowns, rhizomes , turions , woody stems, or crowns which allows them to survive periods of dormancy over cold or dry seasons; these structures typically store carbohydrates which are used once

1333-620: The hormones produced due to environmental situations (i.e., seasons), reproduction, and stage of development to begin and halt the ability to grow or flower. There is also a distinction between the ability to grow and the actual task of growth. For example, most trees regain the ability to grow during winter but do not initiate physical growth until the spring and summer months. The start of dormancy can be seen in perennial plants through withering flowers, loss of leaves on trees, and halting of reproduction in both flowering and budding plants. Perennial species may produce relatively large seeds that have

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1376-432: The lack of root structure in the soil. Fireweed is a useful tool that can be utilized after prescribed fires and logging events because of its fire resistance and ability to recycle the nutrients left in the soil after a fire. It is also able to quickly establish a root system for reproduction and through this can prevent mass wasting and erosion events from occurring on burned or logged hillsides. Reestablishment of vegetation

1419-511: The landscape and prevent further damage, while providing a blanket of vegetation for recovering fauna to create new habitats in and for pollinators to foster the re-establishment of a diverse set of flora. Fireweed has been referred to in poetry and prose since at least the 19th century. Rudyard Kipling wrote, "The fire-weed glows in the centre of the drive ways". In The Fellowship of the Ring , J. R. R. Tolkien lists fireweed as one of

1462-464: The more completely perennial vegetables are: Many aquatic plants are perennial even though many do not have woody tissue. Examples include: Epilobium hirsutum Epilobium hirsutum is a flowering plant belonging to the willowherb genus Epilobium in the family Onagraceae . It is commonly known as the great willowherb , great hairy willowherb or hairy willowherb . Local names include codlins-and-cream, apple-pie and cherry-pie. It

1505-399: The outside, but often tastes bitter. To mitigate this, the root is collected before the plant flowers and the brown thread in the middle removed. The stem centers can also be prepared by splitting the outer stalk, and eaten raw. In Russia, fireweed ( C. angustifolium ) is made into a tea known as Ivan-Chai (Ivan-Tea) or Koporsky tea (from the town of Koporye , where it has been produced since

1548-487: The outward similarity to rosebay, Nerium oleander , while the specific epithet angustifolium means "narrow-leaved". It is commonly known in Britain as "rosebay willowherb", for the same reason. The common American name "fireweed" derives from the species' abundance as a colonizer on burnt sites after forest fires and other disturbances. Fireweed is often abundant in wet calcareous to slightly acidic soils in open fields, pastures, and particularly burned-over lands. It

1591-466: The plant was considered a rare species in the 18th century, and one confined to a few locations with damp, gravelly soils. It was misidentified as great hairy willowherb in contemporary floras. The plant's rise from local rarity to widespread abundance seems to have occurred at the same time as the expansion of the railway network and the associated soil disturbance. The plant became locally known as 'bombweed' due to its rapid colonization of bomb craters in

1634-512: The secondary leaf veins anastomosing , joining together to form a continuous marginal vein just inside the leaf margins. The inflorescence is a symmetrical terminal raceme that blooms progressively from bottom to top, producing a gracefully tapered shape. The flowers are 2 to 3 centimetres ( 3 ⁄ 4 to 1 + 1 ⁄ 4 inches) in diameter, slightly asymmetrical , with four magenta to pink petals and four narrower pink sepals behind. The protruding style has four stigmas. The floral formula

1677-465: The seed yield of perennial species, which could result in the creation of new perennial grain crops. Some examples of new perennial crops being developed are perennial rice and intermediate wheatgrass . A perennial rice developed in 2018, was reported in 2023, to have provided a similar yield to replanted annual rice when evaluated over eight consecutive harvests. Perennial plants dominate many natural ecosystems on land and in fresh water, with only

1720-668: The spring and summer, die back every autumn and winter, and then return in the spring from their rootstock or other overwintering structure, are known as herbaceous perennials . However, depending on the rigours of the local climate (temperature, moisture, organic content in the soil, microorganisms), a plant that is a perennial in its native habitat, may be treated by a gardener as an annual and planted out every year, from seed, from cuttings, or from divisions. Tomato vines, for example, live several years in their natural tropical/ subtropical habitat but are grown as annuals in temperate regions because their above-ground biomass does not survive

1763-431: The stems. Herbaceous perennials from temperate and alpine regions of the world can tolerate the cold during winter. Perennial plants may remain dormant for long periods and then recommence growth and reproduction when the environment is more suitable, while most annual plants complete their life cycle during one growing period, and biennials have two growing periods. The meristem of perennial plants communicates with

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1806-405: The winter. There is also a class of evergreen perennials which lack woody stems, such as Bergenia which retain a mantle of leaves throughout the year. An intermediate class of plants is known as subshrubs , which retain a vestigial woody structure in winter, e.g. Penstemon . The symbol for a perennial plant, based on Species Plantarum by Linnaeus , is [REDACTED] , which is also

1849-439: The year. Deciduous perennials include herbaceous and woody plants; herbaceous plants have stems that lack hard, fibrous growth, while woody plants have stems with buds that survive above ground during dormancy. Some perennials are semi-deciduous, meaning they lose some of their leaves in either winter or summer. Deciduous perennials shed their leaves when growing conditions are no longer suitable for photosynthesis, such as when it

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