Definition: A landform consisting of loose rock particles such as sand, gravel, shingle, pebbles, cobble, or even shell fragments along the shoreline of a body of water.
Definition: A shallow stretch of a river or stream, where the current is above the average stream velocity and where the water forms small rippled waves as a result. It often consists of a rocky bed of gravels or other small stones.
Definition: Of plant duration, a plant whose life span extends over more than two growing seasons, c.f. annual, biennial, ephemeral, of flowering with respect to architecture, hapaxanthic, monocarpic, pleonanthic
Definition: A hard, thorny or needle-like structure which occurs on various organisms. Animals such as porcupines and sea urchins grow spines as a self-defense mechanism
Definition: one of three metabolic pathways for carbon fixation in photosynthesis, along with C4 and CAM. This process converts carbon dioxide and ribulose bisphosphate (RuBP, a 5-carbon sugar) into 3-phosphoglycerate through the following reaction:\r\n\r\nCO2 + H2O + RuBP → (2) 3-phosphoglycerate\r\n\r\nThis reaction occurs in all plants as the first step of the Calvin–Benson cycle.
Definition: a plant that produces wood as its structural tissue. Wood is a structural cellular adaptation that allows woody plants to grow from above ground stems year after year, thus making some woody plants the largest and tallest terrestrial plants. Wood is usually primarily composed of xylem cells with cell walls made of cellulose and lignin
