Shrubs As A Botanical Structural Form
In botany and ecology a shrub is more specifically used to describe the particular physical structural or plant life-form of woody plants which are less than 8 metres (26 ft) high and usually have many stems arising at or near the base.
For example, a descriptive system widely adopted in Australia is based on structural characteristics based on life-form, plus the height and amount of foliage cover of the tallest layer or dominant species.
For shrubs 2–8 metres (6.6–26 ft) high the following structural forms are categorized:
- dense foliage cover (70–100%) — closed-scrub
- mid-dense foliage cover (30–70%) — open-scrub
- sparse foliage cover (10–30%) — tall shrubland
- very sparse foliage cover (<10%) — tall open shrubland
For shrubs less than 2 metres (6.6 ft) high the following structural forms are categorized:
- dense foliage cover (70–100%) — closed-heath or closed low shrubland—(North America)
- mid-dense foliage cover (30–70%) — open-heath or mid-dense low shrubland—(North America)
- sparse foliage cover (10–30%) — low shrubland
- very sparse foliage cover (<10%) — low open shrubland
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Famous quotes containing the words shrubs, botanical, structural and/or form:
“Half-opening her lips to the frost’s morning sigh, how strangely the rose has smiled on a swift-fleeting day of September!
How audacious it is to advance in stately manner before the blue-tit fluttering in the shrubs that have long lost their leaves, like a queen with the spring’s greeting on her lips;
to bloom with steadfast hope that, parted from the cold flower-bed, she may be the last to cling, intoxicated, to a young hostess’s breast.”
—Afanasi Fet (1820–1892)
“Evolution was all over my chldhood, walks abroad with an evolutionist and the world was full of evolution, biological and botanical evolution.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)
“The reader uses his eyes as well as or instead of his ears and is in every way encouraged to take a more abstract view of the language he sees. The written or printed sentence lends itself to structural analysis as the spoken does not because the reader’s eye can play back and forth over the words, giving him time to divide the sentence into visually appreciated parts and to reflect on the grammatical function.”
—J. David Bolter (b. 1951)
“The philosopher is in advance of his age even in the outward form of his life. He is not fed, sheltered, clothed, warmed, like his contemporaries. How can a man be a philosopher and not maintain his vital heat by better methods than other men?”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)