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34-545: Shekvetili is a 5 km seaside strip dominated by the forest of pine trees , at 2 m above sea level . It is located midway between the sea resorts of Ureki and Kobuleti , 21 km west of Ozurgeti , the main town of Guria. The resort is traversed by the S2 highway and is also served by the Natanebi railway station . Shekvetili served as an important trading locale within the southwestern Georgian Principality of Guria in

68-601: A frontier fortress , Shekvetili was a scene of military confrontations between the Russian and Ottoman forces in the course of the Russo-Turkish wars . During the 1828–29 conflict , the Fort of St. Nicholas was one of the bases for Russian operations into "Turkish Guria" ( Adjara ). On 5 March 1829, Major-General Karl Hesse at the head of a force of 1,200 Russian regulars and some 1,500 Gurian militiamen stormed and destroyed

102-734: A class Equisetopsida ( Embryophyta ) encompassing all land plants. This is referred to as Equisetopsida sensu lato to distinguish it from the narrower use to refer to horsetails alone, Equisetopsida sensu stricto . They placed the lycopods into subclass Lycopodiidae and the ferns, keeping the term monilophytes, into five subclasses, Equisetidae, Ophioglossidae, Psilotidae, Marattiidae and Polypodiidae, by dividing Smith's Psilotopsida into its two orders and elevating them to subclass (Ophioglossidae and Psilotidae). Christenhusz et al. (2011) followed this use of subclasses but recombined Smith's Psilotopsida as Ophioglossidae, giving four subclasses of ferns again. Christenhusz and Chase (2014) developed

136-634: A few species (e.g., Cyathea brownii on Norfolk Island and Cyathea medullaris in New Zealand ). Roots are underground non-photosynthetic structures that take up water and nutrients from soil . They are always fibrous and are structurally very similar to the roots of seed plants. As in all vascular plants , the sporophyte is the dominant phase or generation in the life cycle . The gametophytes of ferns, however, are very different from those of seed plants. They are free-living and resemble liverworts , whereas those of seed plants develop within

170-521: A large fortified Ottoman camp at Limani, close to Shekvetili. During the Crimean War , on the night of 15–16 October 1853, a superior Ottoman force of three or five battalions, including bashi-bazouks , led by Hasan and Ali Beys and Dede Ağa, natives of Çürüksu , stormed Shekvetili, held by two companies of Russian infantry and a local Georgian militia under Captain Shcherbakov, and captured

204-408: A mix of both tree types. A separate habitat type, the tropical coniferous forests , occurs in more tropical climates. Temperate coniferous forests are common in the coastal areas of regions that have mild winters and heavy rainfall, or inland in drier climates or montane areas. Many species of trees inhabit these forests including pine , cedar , fir , and redwood . The understory also contains

238-487: A new classification of ferns and lycopods. They used the term Polypodiophyta for the ferns, subdivided like Smith et al. into four groups (shown with equivalents in the Smith system), with 21 families, approximately 212 genera and 10,535 species; This was a considerable reduction in the number of families from the 37 in the system of Smith et al., since the approach was more that of lumping rather than splitting. For instance

272-399: A number of plant and animal taxa. Fern The ferns ( Polypodiopsida or Polypodiophyta ) are a group of vascular plants (plants with xylem and phloem ) that reproduce via spores and have neither seeds nor flowers . They differ from mosses by being vascular, i.e., having specialized tissues that conduct water and nutrients, and in having life cycles in which

306-462: A protective coating called an indusium . The arrangement of the sporangia is important in classification. In monomorphic ferns, the fertile and sterile leaves look morphologically the same, and both are able to photosynthesize. In hemidimorphic ferns, just a portion of the fertile leaf is different from the sterile leaves. In dimorphic (holomorphic) ferns, the two types of leaves are morphologically distinct . The fertile leaves are much narrower than

340-430: A short-lived structure anchored to the ground by rhizoids called gametophyte which produce gametes. When a mature fertile frond bears sori, and spores are released, the spores will settle on the soil and send out rhizoids , while it develops into a prothallus . The prothallus bears spherical antheridia ( s.g. antheridium ) which produce antherozoids (male gametophytes) and archegonia ( s.g. archegonium ) which release

374-812: A significant input to the nitrogen nutrition of rice paddies . They also play certain roles in folklore. Extant ferns are herbaceous perennials and most lack woody growth. When woody growth is present, it is found in the stem. Their foliage may be deciduous or evergreen , and some are semi-evergreen depending on the climate. Like the sporophytes of seed plants, those of ferns consist of stems, leaves and roots. Ferns differ from spermatophytes in that they reproduce by spores rather than having flowers and producing seeds. However, they also differ from spore-producing bryophytes in that, like seed plants, they are polysporangiophytes , their sporophytes branching and producing many sporangia. Also unlike bryophytes, fern sporophytes are free-living and only briefly dependent on

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408-568: A single oosphere . The antherozoid swims up the archegonium and fertilize the oosphere, resulting in a zygote, which will grow into a separate sporophyte, while the gametophyte shortly persists as a free-living plant. Carl Linnaeus (1753) originally recognized 15 genera of ferns and fern allies, classifying them in class Cryptogamia in two groups, Filices (e.g. Polypodium ) and Musci (mosses). By 1806 this had increased to 38 genera, and has progressively increased since ( see Schuettpelz et al (2018) ). Ferns were traditionally classified in

442-569: A wide variety of herbaceous and shrub species. Temperate coniferous forests sustain the highest levels of biomass in any terrestrial ecosystem and are notable for trees of massive proportions in temperate rainforest regions. Structurally, these forests are rather simple, consisting of 2 layers generally: an overstory and understory . However, some forests may support a layer of shrubs . Pine forests support an herbaceous ground layer that may be dominated by grasses and forbs that lend themselves to ecologically important wildfires . In contrast,

476-500: Is polyphyletic , the term fern allies should be abandoned, except in a historical context. More recent genetic studies demonstrated that the Lycopodiophyta are more distantly related to other vascular plants , having radiated evolutionarily at the base of the vascular plant clade , while both the whisk ferns and horsetails are as closely related to leptosporangiate ferns as the ophioglossoid ferns and Marattiaceae . In fact,

510-578: Is intermediate between the eusporangiate ferns and the leptosporangiate ferns. Rai and Graham (2010) broadly supported the primary groups, but queried their relationships, concluding that "at present perhaps the best that can be said about all relationships among the major lineages of monilophytes in current studies is that we do not understand them very well". Grewe et al. (2013) confirmed the inclusion of horsetails within ferns sensu lato , but also suggested that uncertainties remained in their precise placement. Other classifications have raised Ophioglossales to

544-646: The Cretaceous , contemporaneous with the rise of flowering plants that came to dominate the world's flora. Ferns are not of major economic importance, but some are used for food, medicine, as biofertilizer , as ornamental plants, and for remediating contaminated soil. They have been the subject of research for their ability to remove some chemical pollutants from the atmosphere. Some fern species, such as bracken ( Pteridium aquilinum ) and water fern ( Azolla filiculoides ), are significant weeds worldwide. Some fern genera, such as Azolla , can fix nitrogen and make

578-479: The class Filices, and later in a Division of the Plant Kingdom named Pteridophyta or Filicophyta. Pteridophyta is no longer recognised as a valid taxon because it is paraphyletic . The ferns are also referred to as Polypodiophyta or, when treated as a subdivision of Tracheophyta (vascular plants), Polypodiopsida, although this name sometimes only refers to leptosporangiate ferns. Traditionally, all of

612-525: The 18th century. It was occupied by an Ottoman garrison in 1723 and passed into Russian possession in the Treaty of Bucharest in 1812. The Turks referred to it as Shefketil, while to the Russians it came to be known as the Fort of St. Nicholas. According to a contemporary account, "the stores for Fort St. Nicholas are landed upon an adjoining tongue of land, and transported thither on men's shoulders." As

646-603: The Caucasus front of the Crimean War. Temperate coniferous forest Temperate coniferous forest is a terrestrial biome defined by the World Wide Fund for Nature . Temperate coniferous forests are found predominantly in areas with warm summers and cool winters, and vary in their kinds of plant life. In some, needleleaf trees dominate, while others are home primarily to broadleaf evergreen trees or

680-485: The branched sporophyte is the dominant phase. Ferns have complex leaves called megaphylls that are more complex than the microphylls of clubmosses . Most ferns are leptosporangiate ferns . They produce coiled fiddleheads that uncoil and expand into fronds . The group includes about 10,560 known extant species. Ferns are defined here in the broad sense, being all of the Polypodiopsida , comprising both

714-431: The fronds are branched more than once, it can also be a combination of the pinnatifid are pinnate shapes. If the leaf blades are divided twice, the plant has bipinnate fronds, and tripinnate fronds if they branch three times, and all the way to tetra- and pentapinnate fronds. In tree ferns, the main stalk that connects the leaf to the stem (known as the stipe), often has multiple leaflets. The leafy structures that grow from

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748-494: The inclusion of Equisetaceae in the ferns, notably relating to the construction of their sperm and peculiarities of their roots. The leptosporangiate ferns are sometimes called "true ferns". This group includes most plants familiarly known as ferns. Modern research supports older ideas based on morphology that the Osmundaceae diverged early in the evolutionary history of the leptosporangiate ferns; in certain ways this family

782-446: The leptosporangiate ( Polypodiidae ) and eusporangiate ferns , the latter group including horsetails , whisk ferns , marattioid ferns , and ophioglossoid ferns . The fern crown group , consisting of the leptosporangiates and eusporangiates, is estimated to have originated in the late Silurian period 423.2 million years ago, but Polypodiales , the group that makes up 80% of living fern diversity, did not appear and diversify until

816-474: The leptosporangiate ferns. The Marattiaceae are a primitive group of tropical ferns with large, fleshy rhizomes and are now thought to be a sibling taxon to the leptosporangiate ferns. Several other groups of species were considered fern allies: the clubmosses , spikemosses , and quillworts in Lycopodiophyta ; the whisk ferns of Psilotaceae ; and the horsetails of Equisetaceae . Since this grouping

850-555: The maternal gametophyte . The green , photosynthetic part of the plant is technically a megaphyll and in ferns, it is often called a frond . New leaves typically expand by the unrolling of a tight spiral called a crozier or fiddlehead into fronds . This uncurling of the leaf is termed circinate vernation . Leaves are divided into two types: sporophylls and tropophylls. Sporophylls produce spores; tropophylls do not. Fern spores are borne in sporangia which are usually clustered to form sori . The sporangia may be covered with

884-622: The moist conditions found in temperate rain forests favor the dominance by ferns and some forbs. Forest communities dominated by huge trees (e.g., giant sequoia, Sequoiadendron gigantea ; redwood, Sequoia sempervirens ), unusual ecological phenomena, occur in western North America, southwestern South America, as well as in the Australasian region in such areas as southeastern Australia and northern New Zealand. The Klamath-Siskiyou ecoregion of western North America harbors diverse and unusual assemblages and displays notable endemism for

918-519: The post after hours of a pitched battle. Atrocities committed by the bashi-bazouks in and around Shekvetili alienated local Muslim Georgians, who had initially welcomed the Ottoman advance. The Russian casualties amounted to nearly 1,000 killed, including Captain Shcherbakov and Georgian militia commander Prince Giorgi Gurieli, and 80 captured, while the Turks lost 32 dead and 59 wounded. The battle opened

952-430: The rank of a fifth class, separating the whisk ferns and ophioglossoid ferns. The ferns are related to other groups as shown in the following cladogram: Lycophytes [REDACTED] Ferns [REDACTED] Gymnosperms [REDACTED] Angiosperms [REDACTED] The classification of Smith et al. in 2006 treated ferns as four classes: In addition they defined 11 orders and 37 families. That system

986-476: The spore producing vascular plants were informally denominated the pteridophytes , rendering the term synonymous with ferns and fern allies . This can be confusing because members of the division Pteridophyta were also denominated pteridophytes ( sensu stricto ). Traditionally, three discrete groups have been denominated ferns: two groups of eusporangiate ferns, the families Ophioglossaceae ( adder's tongues , moonworts , and grape ferns) and Marattiaceae ; and

1020-417: The spore wall and are dependent on the parent sporophyte for their nutrition. A fern gametophyte typically consists of: The lifecycle of a fern involves two stages, as in club mosses and horsetails . In stage one, the spores are produced by sporophytes in sporangia , which are clustered together in sori ( s.g. sorus ), developing on the underside of fertile fronds. In stage two, the spores germinate into

1054-496: The sterile leaves, and may have no green tissue at all, as in the Blechnaceae and Lomariopsidaceae . The anatomy of fern leaves can be anywhere from simple to highly divided, or even indeterminate (e.g. Gleicheniaceae , Lygodiaceae ). The divided forms are pinnate , where the leaf segments are completely separated from one other, or pinnatifid (partially pinnate), where the leaf segments are still partially connected. When

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1088-463: The stipe are known as pinnae and are often again divided into smaller pinnules. Fern stems are often loosely called rhizomes , even though they grow underground only in some of the species. Epiphytic species and many of the terrestrial ones have above-ground creeping stolons (e.g., Polypodiaceae ), and many groups have above-ground erect semi-woody trunks (e.g., Cyatheaceae , the scaly tree ferns). These can reach up to 20 meters (66 ft) tall in

1122-477: The whisk ferns and ophioglossoid ferns are demonstrably a clade , and the horsetails and Marattiaceae are arguably another clade. Smith et al. (2006) carried out the first higher-level pteridophyte classification published in the molecular phylogenetic era, and considered the ferns as monilophytes, as follows: Molecular data, which remain poorly constrained for many parts of the plants' phylogeny, have been supplemented by morphological observations supporting

1156-844: Was a consensus of a number of studies, and was further refined. The phylogenetic relationships are shown in the following cladogram (to the level of orders). This division into four major clades was then confirmed using morphology alone. Lycopodiophytes (club mosses, spike mosses, quillworts) Spermatophytes (seed plants) Equisetales (horsetails) [REDACTED] Ophioglossales (grapeferns etc.) Psilotales (whisk ferns) [REDACTED] Marattiales [REDACTED] Osmundales [REDACTED] Hymenophyllales (filmy ferns) [REDACTED] Gleicheniales [REDACTED] Schizaeales Salviniales (heterosporous) Cyatheales (tree ferns) [REDACTED] Polypodiales [REDACTED] Subsequently, Chase and Reveal considered both lycopods and ferns as subclasses of

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