Definition: Determined for type of life cycle being annual, biennial, perennial etc.
Comment: The life cycle habit indicates the typical duration of an individual plant's life. Common values are annual, biennial, and perennial. Some plants have different durations depending on environment or location, so a plant can have more than one value.
Definition: Of plant duration, a plant whose life span ends within one year after germination, e.g. a winter annual germinating in the autumn and flowering in the spring (esp. in Mediterranean climates), approximately synonymous to therophyte, c.f. biennial, ephemeral, perennial, c.f. also of flowering with respect to architecture, hapaxanthic, monocarpic, pleonanthic.
Definition: the biochemical pathway a plant uses to gain carbon for growth and reproduction. Plants have evolved three photosynthetic pathways, each in response to distinct environmental conditions, resulting in differences in their ecological patterns of growth and distribution.
Definition: one of three metabolic pathways for carbon fixation in photosynthesis, along with C4 and CAM. This process converts carbon dioxide and ribulose bisphosphate (RuBP, a 5-carbon sugar) into 3-phosphoglycerate through the following reaction:\r\n\r\nCO2 + H2O + RuBP → (2) 3-phosphoglycerate\r\n\r\nThis reaction occurs in all plants as the first step of the Calvin–Benson cycle.
