A Silver Fir shoot showing three successive years of retained leaves

In botany, an evergreen plant is a plant that retains its leaves all year round, with each leaf persisting for more than 12 months. This contrasts with deciduous plants, which completely lose all their foliage for part of the year, becoming bare and leafless. Download high resolution version (1624x1122, 300 KB) Wikipedia does not have an article with this exact name. ... Download high resolution version (1624x1122, 300 KB) Wikipedia does not have an article with this exact name. ... Binomial name Abies alba Mill. ... Botany is the scientific study of plant life. ... In botany, a leaf is an above-ground plant organ specialized for photosynthesis. ... Deciduous means temporary or tending to fall off (deriving from the Latin word decidere, to fall off). ...

Leaf persistence in evergreen plants may vary from only just over a year (shedding the old leaves very soon after the new leaves appear), up to a maximum of 45 years in Great Basin Bristlecone Pine Pinus longaeva (Ewers & Schmid 1981). However, very few species show leaf persistence of over 5 years. Binomial name Pinus longaeva D.K.Bailey The Great Basin Bristlecone Pine (Pinus longaeva) is one of the bristlecone pines, a group of three species of pine found in the higher mountains of the southwest United States. ...

A Southern live oak in winter

One additional special case exists in Welwitschia, an African gymnosperm plant which produces only two leaves, which grow continuously throughout the plant's life but gradually wear away at the apex, giving about 20–40 years' persistence of leaf tissue. Live Oak tree in a pasture Image taken by me, released under GFDL Pollinator 01:58, 17 Feb 2004 (UTC) File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ... Live Oak tree in a pasture Image taken by me, released under GFDL Pollinator 01:58, 17 Feb 2004 (UTC) File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ... Binomial name Quercus virginiana Mill. ... Binomial name Welwitschia mirabilis Hook. ... Coast Douglas-fir cone, from a tree grown from seed collected by David Douglas Gymnosperms are seed-bearing, vascular plants. ...

In tropical regions, most rainforest plants are evergreen, replacing their leaves gradually throughout the year as the leaves age and fall, whereas species growing in seasonally arid climates may be either evergreen or deciduous. Most warm temperate climate plants are also evergreen. In cool temperate climates, fewer plants are evergreen, with a predominance of conifers, as few evergreen broadleaf plants can tolerate severe cold below about -25°C. The tropics are the geographic region of the Earth centered on the equator and limited in latitude by the two tropics: the Tropic of Cancer in the north and the Tropic of Capricorn in the southern hemisphere. ... The Daintree Rainforest in Queensland, Australia. ... In geography, temperate latitudes of the globe lie between the tropics and the polar circles. ... Orders & Families Cordaitales† Pinales   Pinaceae- Pine family   Araucariaceae- Araucaria family   Podocarpaceae- Yellow-wood family   Sciadopityaceae- Umbrella-pine family   Cupressaceae- Cypress family   Cephalotaxaceae- Plum-yew family   Taxaceae- Yew family Vojnovskyales† Voltziales† The conifers, division Pinophyta, are one of 13 or 14 division level taxa within the Kingdom Plantae. ... Classes Magnoliopsida - Dicots Liliopsida - Monocots The flowering plants (also called angiosperms) are a major group of land plants. ...

References

• Ewers, F. W. & Schmid, R. (1981). Longevity of needle fascicles of Pinus longaeva (Bristlecone Pine) and other North American pines. Oecologia 51: 107-115.