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 Evergreen Trees. Evergreen Shrubs . Evergreen Plants

Evergreen Plant Characteristics
Evergreen plants retain their leaves all year round as opposed to deciduous plants, which lose all their foliage for a proportion of the year leaving them bare. Old leaves shed soon after the new leaves appear.Leaf persistence lasts for one to five years in some cases with the Great Basin Bristlecone Pine lasting up to forty-five years.Evergreens provide year round interest whether in the countryside national parks of Sierra Nevada where magnificent Giant Sequoia grow or the humble dwarf conifers in your own garden.For the gardener, evergreens provide essential structure or 'bones' of garden design. Choosing the right evergreens will give you long-term enjoyment with the satisfaction of easy care. Choose the wrong evergreen and you will have a constant battle controlling its growth!

Reasons To Be Evergreen Or Deciduous
Deciduous trees drop their leaves for a specific purpose which is usually self protection as a defense adaptation to a cold or dry season, when maintaining leaves is likely to become a liability, threatening the existence of the plant.

Tropical Evergreen Plants
The majority of tropical rainforest plants are evergreens. These plants replace their leaves throughout the course of the year as the leaves start to age and become less effective and not so beneficial for the supporting the plants sustainability and so ultimatly fall. All plant waste matter easilly rots down in the rain forest, so providing essential growth nutrients for established and newly sprouted plants.

In other areas where the seasons change through an arid climate cycle, both evergreen and deciduous plants thrive, having adapted to their own envirinmental requirements very successfully.

Warm Temperate Evergreen Plants
On the whole, the majority of warm temperate climate plants are evergreen. Again, the growing climate and conditions dictate the success or failure of a plant to adapt. Of course, the ideal place for plants to thrive is a nice, warm, stable, well watered environment and evergreens have adapted most successfully.

Cooler temperate climates have fewer evergreen plants. Such areas  produce an abundance of conifers, as fewer evergreen broadleaf plants are able to tolerate severe cold, with temperatures going down to about -30 °C, -22 °F.

Seasonal Climate Evergreen Plants
In seasonal areas where there may be a cold or dry seasons, there are good survival reasons for a plant being decidous. A plant being evergreen is usually a good indication of adaptation to low nutrient levels. Deciduous trees, for example, lose their nutrients whenever they drop their leaves.  It is essential for the tree to replenish these lost nutrients from the soil so as to build new leaves and promote growth.

In difficult times when hardly any nutrients are available, evergreen plants have a distinct survival advantage, even though their leaves and needles must be capable of withstanding cold and, or severe drought, and are consequently less efficient at photosynthesis (The process used by green plants to turn the energy of sunlight into chemical reactions that convert carbon dioxide into oxygen and also produces sugars that feed the plant).

In warmer climates with both poor soil and ground conditions, some pines and cypresses species grow very well.

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