2024 Author: Gavin MacAdam | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:38
The first steps of the New Year are heard on planet Earth. Wherever his foot goes, an evergreen plant will be found, symbolizing eternal life. They teach a person resilience and patience, nourish with energy in difficult moments of life. It's amazing how a powerful pine tree with its long needles, full of strength for the eternal cycle of life, grows from a small grain that has fallen into fertile soil. And the earth's surface is carefully sheltered from the cold or scorching sun rays by evergreen creeping plants. There is no limit to their diversity, just as there is no limit to eternal life
Evergreen conifers
The word "evergreen" is more often associated with the waves of the warm sea, lazily running ashore, where under a coconut or date palm lies a philosopher who talks about the eternity of being. It is easy for him to indulge in thoughts and dreams when finances are not required to buy a warm sheepskin coat and cozy felt boots knocked down by the hand of a craftsman.
Those who live in harsh climatic zones, worried about their daily clothes, sometimes do not notice that there are so many living plants around them that are not afraid of cold and snowstorms. They wrap their evergreen lush branches with a snow blanket and fervently look at the world trembling with cold.
Nature has modified their green outfit, transforming the wide leaves of plants that fall in winter into thin but persistent needles that have learned to resist the evil spell of the Snow Queen.
The needles are short and prickly, like those of the Spruce and the Fir, long and pointed-nosed like those of the Scots Pine and its generous relative for a unique treat, the Cedar Pine, or they can be miniature scales overlapping each other, like those of Juniper and Tui. Although, in any habitual phenomenon, there are always deviations from the standard sample, therefore, young needles of the Spruce will surprise with tenderness and delicacy, and the scaly leaves of an adult Juniper are needles in their youth.
But the main thing in what conifers are similar to each other is their fearlessness and resistance to the vagaries of the weather. They gratefully accept both rain and snow; clear sunny sky and gloomy gray-black clouds hanging over the ground.
Ground cover plants
Many plants have adapted to endure natural hardships, not trying to rise above others, but modestly spreading over the surface of the earth. You can learn the science of survival from such plants, when it seems that the whole world is up in arms against you.
Thousands of feet pass along their evergreen leaves, trampling and destroying, but they do not murmur, but are looking for an opportunity to break out of the soil with new shoots in order to enjoy life and decorate it with their presence. And they succeed, as the common man manages to survive in the era of wars, natural disasters and economic crises.
Undersized lingonberry bushes with small rounded fragile leaves, as if cobbled together from beeswax, are spread out with a carpet, covered in autumn with vitamin red fruits-berries. They are not afraid of permafrost and 50-degree Yakut frosts. They will hide under snowdrifts to wait out the cold, and closer to summer they will again smile at being with their evergreen leaves.
Summer residents have long tamed such plants, which help to shelter the earth from adversity and give beauty, joy and the eternal triumph of being. These are dense rosettes-roses Molodila with multi-colored leaves and decorative flowers; mossy bumps of all kinds of Saxifrage; Leaves-coins of Verbeinik mint and hundreds of thousands of other evergreen representatives that do not claim to be the leader in nature.
Vegetation of the tropics
The most numerous kingdom of evergreens is given, of course, by tropical forests.
The abundance of sun and moisture allowed nature to create plants, the fruits of which a person loves to eat with pleasure and benefit for the body all year round. Dates and coconuts, lemons and tangerines … have long ceased to be exotic, keeping human organisms in a vigorous state.
Many plants successfully migrated from tropical forests to our cold lands, turning into indoor plants. Only about the magnificent family Amaryllidaceae can be talked about for a very long time.
