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Cerbera Manghas
''Cerbera manghas'', the sea mango, is a small evergreen coastal tree growing up to tall. It is native to coastal areas in Africa, Asia, Australasia, and the Pacific islands. It is classified as one of the three species in the genus Cerbera that constitute as mangroves. Description The shiny dark-green leaves grow in a spiral arrangement, and are ovoid in shape. The flowers are fragrant, possessing a white tubular five-lobed corolla about in diameter, with a pink to red throat. They have five stamens and the ovary is positioned above the other flower parts. The fruits are egg-shaped, long. At maturity they turn bright red. Toxicity The leaves and the fruits contain the potent cardiac glycoside cerberin, which is extremely poisonous if ingested. This was utilised in trials of ordeal done towards criminal suspects in the Merina Kingdom ruling the island of Madagascar until the practice was abolished during Radama II's reign. On the opposite spectrum, Fijians use its (''vasa'', ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Carl Linnaeus
Carl Linnaeus (; 23 May 1707 – 10 January 1778), also known after his ennoblement in 1761 as Carl von Linné Blunt (2004), p. 171. (), was a Swedish botanist, zoologist, taxonomist, and physician who formalised binomial nomenclature, the modern system of naming organisms. He is known as the "father of modern taxonomy". Many of his writings were in Latin; his name is rendered in Latin as and, after his 1761 ennoblement, as . Linnaeus was born in Råshult, the countryside of Småland, in southern Sweden. He received most of his higher education at Uppsala University and began giving lectures in botany there in 1730. He lived abroad between 1735 and 1738, where he studied and also published the first edition of his ' in the Netherlands. He then returned to Sweden where he became professor of medicine and botany at Uppsala. In the 1740s, he was sent on several journeys through Sweden to find and classify plants and animals. In the 1750s and 1760s, he continued to collect an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Madagascar
Madagascar (; mg, Madagasikara, ), officially the Republic of Madagascar ( mg, Repoblikan'i Madagasikara, links=no, ; french: République de Madagascar), is an island country in the Indian Ocean, approximately off the coast of East Africa across the Mozambique Channel. At Madagascar is the world's List of island countries, second-largest island country, after Indonesia. The nation is home to around 30 million inhabitants and consists of the island of Geography of Madagascar, Madagascar (the List of islands by area, fourth-largest island in the world), along with numerous smaller peripheral islands. Following the prehistoric breakup of the supercontinent Gondwana, Madagascar split from the Indian subcontinent around 90 million years ago, allowing native plants and animals to evolve in relative isolation. Consequently, Madagascar is a biodiversity hotspot; over 90% of wildlife of Madagascar, its wildlife is endemic. Human settlement of Madagascar occurred during or befo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Plants Described In 1753
Plants are predominantly photosynthetic eukaryotes of the kingdom Plantae. Historically, the plant kingdom encompassed all living things that were not animals, and included algae and fungi; however, all current definitions of Plantae exclude the fungi and some algae, as well as the prokaryotes (the archaea and bacteria). By one definition, plants form the clade Viridiplantae (Latin name for "green plants") which is sister of the Glaucophyta, and consists of the green algae and Embryophyta (land plants). The latter includes the flowering plants, conifers and other gymnosperms, ferns and their allies, hornworts, liverworts, and mosses. Most plants are multicellular organisms. Green plants obtain most of their energy from sunlight via photosynthesis by primary chloroplasts that are derived from endosymbiosis with cyanobacteria. Their chloroplasts contain chlorophylls a and b, which gives them their green color. Some plants are parasitic or mycotrophic and have lost the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Decorative Fruits And Seeds
Beauty is commonly described as a feature of objects that makes these objects pleasurable to perceive. Such objects include landscapes, sunsets, humans and works of art. Beauty, together with art and taste, is the main subject of aesthetics, one of the major branches of philosophy. As a positive aesthetic value, it is contrasted with ugliness as its negative counterpart. Along with truth and goodness it is one of the transcendentals, which are often considered the three fundamental concepts of human understanding. One difficulty in understanding beauty is because it has both objective and subjective aspects: it is seen as a property of things but also as depending on the emotional response of observers. Because of its subjective side, beauty is said to be "in the eye of the beholder". It has been argued that the ability on the side of the subject needed to perceive and judge beauty, sometimes referred to as the "sense of taste", can be trained and that the verdicts of experts ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Flora Of The Tubuai Islands
Flora is all the plant life present in a particular region or time, generally the naturally occurring (indigenous) native plants. Sometimes bacteria and fungi are also referred to as flora, as in the terms ''gut flora'' or ''skin flora''. Etymology The word "flora" comes from the Latin name of Flora, the goddess of plants, flowers, and fertility in Roman mythology. The technical term "flora" is then derived from a metonymy of this goddess at the end of the sixteenth century. It was first used in poetry to denote the natural vegetation of an area, but soon also assumed the meaning of a work cataloguing such vegetation. Moreover, "Flora" was used to refer to the flowers of an artificial garden in the seventeenth century. The distinction between vegetation (the general appearance of a community) and flora (the taxonomic composition of a community) was first made by Jules Thurmann (1849). Prior to this, the two terms were used indiscriminately.Thurmann, J. (1849). ''Essai de Phyt ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Flora Of Tropical Asia
Flora is all the plant life present in a particular region or time, generally the naturally occurring (indigenous) native plants. Sometimes bacteria and fungi are also referred to as flora, as in the terms ''gut flora'' or '' skin flora''. Etymology The word "flora" comes from the Latin name of Flora, the goddess of plants, flowers, and fertility in Roman mythology. The technical term "flora" is then derived from a metonymy of this goddess at the end of the sixteenth century. It was first used in poetry to denote the natural vegetation of an area, but soon also assumed the meaning of a work cataloguing such vegetation. Moreover, "Flora" was used to refer to the flowers of an artificial garden in the seventeenth century. The distinction between vegetation (the general appearance of a community) and flora (the taxonomic composition of a community) was first made by Jules Thurmann (1849). Prior to this, the two terms were used indiscriminately.Thurmann, J. (1849). ''Essai de Phy ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cardenolide
A cardenolide is a type of steroid. Many plants contain derivatives, collectively known as cardenolides, including many in the form of cardenolide glycosides (cardenolides that contain structural groups derived from sugars). Cardenolide glycosides are often toxic; specifically, they are heart-arresting. Cardenolides are toxic to animals through inhibition of the enzyme Na+/K+‐ATPase, which is responsible for maintaining the sodium and potassium ion gradients across the cell membranes. Etymology The term derives from ''card-'' "heart" (from Greek καρδία ''kardiā'') and the suffix ''-enolide'', referring to the lactone ring at C17. Cardenolides are a class of steroids (or aglycones if viewed as cardiac glycoside constituents), and cardenolides are a subtype of this class (see MeSH D codes list). Structure Cardenolides are C(23)-steroids with methyl groups at C-10 and C-13 and a five-membered lactone (specifically a butenolide) at C-17. They are aglycone constituents of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Coconut Crab
The coconut crab (''Birgus latro'') is a species of terrestrial hermit crab, also known as the robber crab or palm thief. It is the largest terrestrial arthropod in the world, with a weight of up to . It can grow to up to in width from the tip of one leg to the tip of another. It is found on islands across the Indian Ocean, and parts of the Pacific Ocean as far east as the Gambier Islands, Pitcairn Islands and Caroline Island, similar to the distribution of the coconut palm; it has been extirpated from most areas with a significant human population, including mainland Australia and Madagascar. Coconut crabs also live off the coast of Africa near Zanzibar. The coconut crab is the only species of the genus ''Birgus'', and is related to the other terrestrial hermit crabs of the genus ''Coenobita''. It shows a number of adaptations to life on land. Juvenile coconut crabs use empty gastropod shells for protection like other hermit crabs, but the adults develop a tough exoskeleton on ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Goffin's Cockatoo
The Tanimbar corella (''Cacatua goffiniana''), also known as Goffin's cockatoo, is a species of cockatoo endemic to forests of Yamdena, Larat and Selaru, all islands in the Tanimbar Islands archipelago in Indonesia. It has been introduced to the Kai Islands, Indonesia, Puerto Rico and Singapore. This species was only formally described in 2004, after it was discovered that the previous formal descriptions pertained to individuals of a different cockatoo species, the Ducorps' or Solomons cockatoo (''Cacatua ducorpsii''). Tanimbar corellas are the smallest of the white cockatoos. It is classified as Near Threatened due to deforestation and bird trade. It breeds well in captivity and there is a large avicultural population. Description Tanimbar corellas weigh, on average, about for females and for males. They are about from head to tail. Like all members of the family Cacatuidae, the Tanimbar corella is crested, meaning it has a collection of feathers on its head that it can ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fiji
Fiji ( , ,; fj, Viti, ; Fiji Hindi: फ़िजी, ''Fijī''), officially the Republic of Fiji, is an island country in Melanesia, part of Oceania in the South Pacific Ocean. It lies about north-northeast of New Zealand. Fiji consists of an archipelago of more than 330 islands—of which about 110 are permanently inhabited—and more than 500 islets, amounting to a total land area of about . The most outlying island group is Ono-i-Lau. About 87% of the total population of live on the two major islands, Viti Levu and Vanua Levu. About three-quarters of Fijians live on Viti Levu's coasts: either in the capital city of Suva; or in smaller urban centres such as Nadi—where tourism is the major local industry; or in Lautoka, where the Sugarcane, sugar-cane industry is dominant. The interior of Viti Levu is sparsely inhabited because of its terrain. The majority of Fiji's islands were formed by Volcano, volcanic activity starting around 150 million years ago. Some geo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Radama II
Radama II (September 23, 1829 – May 12, 1863 'contested'' was the son and heir of Queen Ranavalona I and ruled from 1861 to 1863 over the Kingdom of Madagascar, which controlled virtually the entire island. Radama's rule, although brief, was a pivotal period in the history of the Kingdom of Madagascar. Under the unyielding and often harsh 33-year rule of his mother, Queen Ranavalona I, Madagascar had successfully preserved its cultural and political independence from European colonial designs. Rejecting the queen's policy of isolationism and persecution of Christians, Radama II permitted religious freedom and re-opened Madagascar to European influence. Under the terms of the Lambert Charter, which Radama secretly contracted in 1855 with French entrepreneur Joseph-François Lambert while Ranavalona still ruled, the French were awarded exclusive rights to the exploitation of large tracts of valuable land and other lucrative resources and projects. This agreement, which was l ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Merina Kingdom
The Merina Kingdom, or Kingdom of Madagascar, officially the Kingdom of Imerina (–1897), was a pre-colonial state off the coast of Southeast Africa that, by the 19th century, dominated most of what is now Madagascar. It spread outward from Imerina, the Central Highlands region primarily inhabited by the Merina ethnic group with a spiritual capital at Ambohimanga and a political capital west at Antananarivo, currently the seat of government for the modern state of Madagascar. The Merina kings and queens who ruled over greater Madagascar in the 19th century were the descendants of a long line of hereditary Merina royalty originating with Andriamanelo, who is traditionally credited with founding Imerina in 1540. In 1883, France invaded the Merina Kingdom to establish a protectorate. France invaded again in 1894 and conquered the kingdom, making it a French colony, in what became known as the Franco-Hova Wars. History Hova-Vazimba conflict Madagascar's central highlands w ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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