deciduous

Wytham Woods, near Oxford, England. Bluebells can be seen on the floor of this deciduous woodland. Deciduous trees lose their leaves in autumn, and in the spring this allows high levels of light to reach the flowers on the ground. As the leaves mature, there is less sunlight, and the bluebells die back.

Wytham Woods, near Oxford, England. In early spring the forest floor was covered in bluebells, but as new leaves grow and cast more shade, less sunlight reaches the flowers, and they die back. Deciduous woodlands thus have pronounced seasonal differences in flower and vegetation growth, to make use of the available light.

Describing trees and shrubs, that shed their leaves at the end of the growing season or during a dry season to reduce transpiration (the loss of water by evaporation).

Most deciduous trees belong to the angiosperms, plants in which the seeds are enclosed within an ovary, and the term ‘deciduous tree’ is sometimes used to mean ‘angiosperm tree’, despite the fact that many angiosperms are evergreen, especially in the tropics, and a few gymnosperms, plants in which the seeds are exposed, are deciduous (for example, larches). The term broad-leaved is now preferred to ‘deciduous’ for this reason.

Examples of deciduous trees are oak and maple.