Forest Health

Glossary

Abiotic factors – Nonliving: The abiotic factors of the environment include light, temperature, wind, and dissolved nutrients.

Biotic factors – Having to do with life or living organisms; produced or caused by living organisms.

Complete metamorphosis – the type of life cycle where an insect passes through four separate stages of growth, as an egg, larva, pupa, and adult (ie. butterflies and beetles).

Foliage – Plant/tree leaves and needles.

Hyphae – Any of the threadlike filaments forming the mycelium of a fungus.

Incomplete metamorphosis – The type of life cycle where the immature stages of the insect, called nymphs, resemble the adult; there is no pupa stage (ie. crickets and grasshoppers).

Lateral leader – The branches of a tree that grow horizontally.

Mycelium – The vegetative part of a fungus, consisting of a mass of branching, threadlike hyphae.

Photosynthesis – The process in green plants/trees and certain other organisms by which sugars are made from carbon dioxide and water using sunlight as an energy source. Most forms of photosynthesis release oxygen as a by-product.

Signs of disease – Physical structures indicating the presence of a disease (ie. mycelium, mushrooms, conks etc.).

Symptoms of a disease – Changes in a tree’s normal characteristics that indicate that a disease is present (ie. discolouring of needles, reduction in growth, deformed growth patterns etc.).

Terminal leader – the top stem of a tree that grows vertically and is responsible for increasing the tree’s height.

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