Plant

Plants, also called green plants, are multicellular eukaryotes of the kingdom Plantae. They form an unranked clade Viridiplantae (Latin for green plants) that includes the flowering plants, conifers and other gymnosperms, ferns, clubmosses, hornworts, liverworts, mosses and the green algae. Green plants excludes the red and brown algae, the fungi, archaea, bacteria and animals.

Green plants have cell walls with cellulose and obtain most of their energy from sunlight via photosynthesis by primary chloroplasts, derived from endosymbiosis with cyanobacteria. Their chloroplasts contain chlorophylls a and b, which gives them their green color. Some plants are parasitic and have lost the ability to produce normal amounts of chlorophyll or to photosynthesize. Plants are also characterized by sexual reproduction, modular and indeterminate growth, and an alternation of generations, although asexual reproduction is also common.

Precise numbers are difficult to determine, but as of 2010, there are thought to be 300–315 thousand species of plants, of which the great majority, some 260–290 thousand, are seed plants (see the table below). Green plants provide most of the world's molecular oxygen and are the basis of most of the earth's ecologies, especially on land. Plants that produce grains, fruits and vegetables form mankind's basic foodstuffs, and have been domesticated for millennia. Plants are used as ornaments and, until recently and in great variety, they have served as the source of most medicines and drugs. The scientific study of plants is known as botany, a branch of biology.

Caspian

Caspian can refer to:

In fiction

Other uses

National park

A national park is a park in use for conservation purposes. Often it is a reserve of natural, semi-natural, or developed land that a sovereign state declares or owns. Although individual nations designate their own national parks differently, there is a common idea: the conservation of 'wild nature' for posterity and as a symbol of national pride. An international organization, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), and its World Commission on Protected Areas, has defined "National Park" as its Category II type of protected areas.

While this type of national park had been proposed previously, the United States established the first "public park or pleasuring-ground for the benefit and enjoyment of the people", Yellowstone National Park, in 1872. Although Yellowstone was not officially termed a "national park" in its establishing law, it was always termed such in practice and is widely held to be the first and oldest national park in the world. The first area to use "national park" in its creation legislation was the US's Mackinac Island, in 1875. Australia's Royal National Park, established in 1879, was the world's third official national park. In 1895 ownership of Mackinac Island was transferred to the State of Michigan as a state park and national park status was consequently lost. As a result, Australia's Royal National Park is by some considerations the second oldest national park now in existence.

Hirkan National Park

Hirkan National Park (Azerbaijani: Hirkan Milli Parkı) — is a national park of Azerbaijan. It was established by the decree of the President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev, in an area in Lankaran Rayon and Astara Rayon administrative districts on February 9, 2004 on the basis of the former "Hirkan State Reserve" which it superseded, on a surface area of 29,760 hectares (297.6 km²). It was enlarged by presidential decree on April 23, 2008 from 29,760 hectares (297.6 km²) to 40,358 hectares (403.58 km²).

The area of Hirkan National Park is 99% covered by forests in a primarily mountainous region, and is strictly protected. It constitutes one of the largest contiguous forests in Azerbaijan, which is not interrupted by any settlement or pasture.

The Hirkan National Park protects the humid subtropical and humid temperate forests in the area of the Lenkoran Lowland and the Talysh Mountains, sheltering many endemic plant and animal species.

The ecosystem of the Hirkan National Park, belongs to the Caspian Hyrcanian (Girkan) mixed forests ecoregion, an area of lush deciduous broadleaved lowland and montane forests (subtropical and temperate rainforests) that completely cover the Talysh Mountains and partially cover the Lankaran Lowland.

Caspian tiger

The Caspian tiger (Panthera tigris virgata), also known as the Hyrcanian tiger, the Mazandaran tiger, the Persian tiger and the Turan tiger, is an extinct tiger subspecies that had been recorded in the wild until the early 1970s, and formerly inhabited the sparse forest habitats and riverine corridors west and south of the Caspian Sea, from Turkey, Iran and east through Central Asia into the Takla Makan desert of Xinjiang, China. There are no individuals in captivity.

The Caspian tiger was formerly found in Chinese and Russian Turkestan, Afghanistan, Iran, and Turkey.

The Caspian tiger together with the Siberian and Bengal tiger subspecies represented the largest living cat and ranked among the biggest cats that ever existed.

Characteristics

Size

The body of Caspian tigers was generally less massive than of Siberian tigers, and their average size slightly less. In Turkestan, male tigers exceeded 200 cm (79 in) in length, though an estimated body length of 270 cm (110 in) was recorded. Females were smaller in size, normally ranging between 160 to 180 cm (63 to 71 in). The maximum known weight was 240 kg (530 lb). Maximum skull length in males was 297.0 to 365.8 mm (11.69 to 14.40 in), while that of females was 195.7 to 255.5 mm (7.70 to 10.06 in). Although tigers from Turkestan never reached the size of Siberian tigers, there are records of very large individuals. In January 1954, a tiger killed near the Sumbar River in Kopet-Dag had a skull length of 385 mm (15.2 in), which is considerably more than the known maximum for this population and slightly exceeds that of most Siberian tigers.