There are field, vegetable and ornamental crops that begin and complete their life cycle during one growing season. This is a large and important group of organisms - annual plants. Examples: many cereals (wheat, rye), legumes (beans, soybeans), vegetables and melons (tomato, cucumber, pumpkin, watermelon). What are the annuals? To find out the answer, we will make an absentee botanical walk through the gardens and fields, getting acquainted with ordinary and unusual vegetables, flowers, spices and tenacious weeds.
Variety of plants
People use many living organisms that live on earth. Our neighbors on the planet are green algae, mosses, higher spore, bare and angiosperms. Mankind needs all of these groups, they find industrial, agricultural, food, medical applications, have cognitive and aesthetic value.
Among the representatives of the flora, perennial, biennial and annual plants are distinguished. Examples:
- Perennials: apple tree, peach, grape, lemon and other shrubs, creepers and trees.
- Biennial plants: white cabbage, turnips, beets, carrots, violet tricolor.
- Annuals: tomato, pepper, balsam, wormwood, St. John's wort, chamomile, aster.
Life cycle
Depending on climatic conditions and cultivation goals, the lifespan of agricultural and ornamental plants varies. If the climatic conditions are severe, then the growth of vegetables, flowers and herbs may be limited to one growing season.
In the gardens and flower beds of central Russia, a large group of perennials is grown as annual plants: aster, snapdragon, Turkish carnation, nasturtium, petunia, verbena, lobelia. These flowering ornamental crops will not survive the frosty winter.
Many biennials grow 1 year for root crops. So, celery and parsley in the first season form a rosette of succulent leaves, and in the second year they bloom.
A large role in nutrition, production and treatment is played by many annual plants. Examples: winter wheat, soybeans, cotton, mustard, flax, calendula. After flowering, the formation of fruits and seeds, the aboveground and underground parts die off, only seeds that are carried by wind, water, animals and humans are preserved.
What are annual plants? Examples
Curious cases are associated with the unintentional transfer of plants to the new habitat. Plantain from Europe "traveled" to the American continent, along with dirt on the soles of the shoes of white settlers. Aborigines called large green leaves "traces of a white man."
At the end of the 17th century, in an effigy of a bird stuffed with grass, an annual herbaceous plant, the Canadian small-petrel, came to Europe from the ocean. Over time, this malicious weed has spread to large expanses of Europe and Asia, is found in the Far East.
There are plants that are hazardous to public health and agriculture, for example, ragweed. The pollen of small nondescript flowers causes allergies and bronchial asthma, the seeds pollute the crop. It is difficult to fight with ragweed, because on one shoot from 180,000 to 300,000 seeds ripen annually, they are spread over long distances.
The use of annuals in agriculture
The cold climate and permafrost in the polar regions of Eurasia and North America limit the range of plants grown. Agriculture in these areas is possible in greenhouses and heated greenhouses. In a cool climate, you can grow bread crops, some vegetables and root crops. The temperate zone is the vast expanses of Europe in Asia, central parts of North America. For mass farming in these regions, cereals, legumes, technical and vegetable-gourds are used.
In the southern part of the temperate zone and in the subtropics, more thermophilic species of agricultural plants are cultivated. These are corn, rice, cotton, sweet pepper, eggplant, watermelon, melon. Significant value for industry and the population are oilseed, essential oil and spice annual plants, the names of which are familiar to many. These are sunflower, amaranth, mustard, rapeseed, anise, oregano, wormwood, sage.
Decorative annuals - a godsend for the florist and summer gardener
Widely used in horticulture, landscape design, flowering and decorative leafy annuals. These plants are suitable for cutting - for bouquets and baskets of fresh flowers, floral arrangements. Feel great on the flower beds, in containers and flowerpots, decorating balconies, petunias with large bright flowers.
Marigolds, zinnias and asters sometimes overshadow roses with their magnificent inflorescences. Coleus and kohii delight with fresh colors of leaves. Giants among low- and medium-sized annuals in the gardens - castor oil and amaranth; the height of individual specimens can reach 2 m.
Annual ornamental plants in flower beds and containers
The main advantage of annual plants landscape designers call the ability to annually use them to change the color scheme, as well as other important characteristics of flower beds. Annual plants greatly facilitate the creation of multi-level and island flower beds, rabatka, mixborders and borders.
Examples of the most common annual landscaping: petunia. aster, tagetes or marigolds, antirrinum or snapdragon, ageratum, gelenium, arctotis, zinnia, elegant gypsophila, calendula, ornamental cabbage, rudbeckia.
In indoor culture, an annual or biennial calceolaria plant becomes popular . In the pots, containers and hanging flower pots, the bright flowers of lobelia, nasturtium, and tunbergia look wonderful against the background of elegant stems and green foliage. Among annual plants there are fragrant: gesso, fragrant tobacco, reseda, sweet peas. The healing properties of sage, echinacea.
Annuals are easy to grow from seeds, seedlings of these plants usually take root well when transplanting from greenhouses and containers into open ground.