Deciduous Traditional Cache
-
Difficulty:
-
-
Terrain:
-
Size: 
(small)
Please note Use of geocaching.com services is subject to the terms and conditions
in our disclaimer.
In botany and horticulture, deciduous plants, including trees,
shrubs and herbaceous perennials, are those that lose all of their
leaves for part of the year. This process is called
abscission.
In some cases leaf loss coincides with winter - namely in temperate
or polar climates. While in other areas of the world, plants lose
their leaves during the dry season or during other seasonal
variations in rainfall, including tropical, subtropical and arid
regions of the world.
Many deciduous plants flower during the period when they are
leafless as this increases the effectiveness of pollination. The
absence of leaves improves wind transmission of pollen for
wind-pollinated plants, and increases the visibility of the flowers
to insects in insect-pollinated plants.
Leaf drop or abscission involves complex physiological signals and
changes within plants. The process of photosynthesis steadily
degrades the supply of chlorophylls in foliage; plants normally
replenish chlorophylls during the summer months. When days grow
short and nights are cool, or when plants are drought stressed,
deciduous trees decrease chlorophyll pigment production allowing
other pigments present in the leaf to become apparent, resulting in
fall color. These other pigments include carotenoids that are
yellow, brown, and orange. Anthocyanin pigments produce reds and
purple colors, though they are not always present in the leaves but
are produced in the foliage in late summer when sugars are trapped
in the leaves after the process of abscission begins.
Plants with deciduous foliage have both advantages and
disadvantages compared to plants with evergreen foliage. Since
deciduous plants lose their leaves to conserve water or to better
survive winter weather conditions they must regrow new foliage
during the next suitable growing season; this uses more resources
which evergreens do not need to expend. Evergreens suffer greater
water loss during the winter and they also can experience greater
predation pressure, especially when small. Losing leaves in winter
may reduce damage from insects; repairing leaves and keeping them
functional may be more costly than just losing and regrowing
them.
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
ab uvag
Treasures
You'll collect a digital Treasure from one of these collections when you find and log this geocache:
Loading Treasures