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Christian Konrad Sprengel
Christian Konrad Sprengel (22 September 1750 – 7 April 1816) was a German naturalist, theologist, and teacher. He is most famous for his research on plant sexuality. Sprengel was the first to recognize that the function of flowers was to attract insects, and that nature favoured cross-pollination. Along with the work of Joseph Gottlieb Kölreuter he set the foundations for the modern study of floral biology and anthecology, but his work was not widely recognized until Charles Darwin examined and confirmed several of his observations almost 50 years later; see Fertilisation of Orchids (1862). Life Sprengel was born in Brandenburg an der Havel in the Margraviate of Brandenburg. He was the 15th and the last son of a preacher Ernst Victor Sprengel and his second wife Dorothea Gnadenreich Schaeffer (died 1778). Ernst Victor's father had been an organist and he himself was a choir-master, teacher and later archdeacon. Christian Konrad was expected to continue the traditional ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Brandenburg An Der Havel
Brandenburg an der Havel () is a town in Brandenburg, Germany, which served as the capital of the Margraviate of Brandenburg until it was replaced by Berlin in 1417. With a population of 72,040 (as of 2020), it is located on the banks of the Havel, River Havel. The town of Brandenburg provided the name for the medieval Bishopric of Brandenburg, the Margraviate of Brandenburg and the current state of Brandenburg. Today, it is a small town compared to nearby Berlin but was the original nucleus of the former realms of Margraviate of Brandenburg, Brandenburg and Kingdom of Prussia, Prussia. History Middle Ages The castle of Brenna, which had been a fortress of the Slavic peoples, Slavic tribe Stodoranie, was conquered in 929 after the Battle of Lenzen by the Saxons, Saxon King Henry the Fowler. It was first mentioned as ''Brendanburg'' in 948. The name of the city is a combination of two words ''braniti'' – to protect/defend and ''bor'' – forest/wood. The town remained unde ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ernst Ludwig Heim
Ernst Ludwig Heim (22 July 1747 – 15 September 1834) was a German physician and naturalist born in Solz, Thuringia. He was popular for providing free medical treatment in Berlin. As a naturalist Heim influenced Alexander von Humboldt and Christian Konrad Sprengel. Early life Heim was the son of pastor Johann Ludwig Heim (1704–1785). He went to Halle to study in 1766 and received his doctorate in 1772. He studied medicine, botany, astronomy, natural law and philosophy. He then served as (city physician) in Spandau (1776). He travelled across the Netherlands, France and England and visited hospitals and examined public health. Heim married Charlotte Maeker in 1780 and in April 1783 they moved to Berlin with their young daughter and lived at the Gendarmenmarkt. He opened a practice in Markgrafenstraße where he had a system of treating poor patients for free in the early morning. In 1799 he introduced smallpox vaccination in Berlin using cowpox inoculation based on Edward Je ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Silene Chlorantha
''Silene chlorantha'' is a species of flowering plant belonging to the family Caryophyllaceae Caryophyllaceae, commonly called the pink family or carnation family, is a family of flowering plants. It is included in the dicotyledon order Caryophyllales in the APG III system, alongside 33 other families, including Amaranthaceae, Cactacea .... Its native range is Europe to Central Asia. References {{Taxonbar, from=Q165030 chlorantha ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Geranium Sylvaticum
''Geranium sylvaticum'', the wood cranesbill or woodland geranium, is a species of hardy flowering plant in the family Geraniaceae, native to Europe and northern Turkey. The Latin specific epithet ''sylvaticum'' means "of woodland", referring to the plant's native habitat, as does its common name "wood cranesbill". Description The plant grows to tall by wide, it is a mound-forming herbaceous, gynodioecious perennial with deeply cut and toothed 7-lobed basal leaves. In summer, flowers are borne on stalks with ruffs of leaves. The flower colour ranges from mauve to sky blue, depending on soil conditions. It has 10 stamens and glandular-hairy fruits. Cultivation ''G. sylvaticum'' is one of many Geranium species which are valued in gardens. It is suitable for cultivation in temperate climates in reliably moist, lightly shaded positions, as the name suggests. It is particularly useful for underplanting deciduous trees, roses, lilies, and other summer-flowering subjects. Various c ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Ray
John Ray FRS (29 November 1627 – 17 January 1705) was a Christian English naturalist widely regarded as one of the earliest of the English parson-naturalists. Until 1670, he wrote his name as John Wray. From then on, he used 'Ray', after "having ascertained that such had been the practice of his family before him". He published important works on botany, zoology, and natural theology. His classification of plants in his ''Historia Plantarum'', was an important step towards modern taxonomy. Ray rejected the system of dichotomous division by which species were classified according to a pre-conceived, either/or type system , and instead classified plants according to similarities and differences that emerged from observation. He was among the first to attempt a biological definition for the concept of ''species'', as "a group of morphologically similar organisms arising from a common ancestor". Another significant contribution to taxonomy was his division of plants into those ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Invalidenfriedhof
The Invalids' Cemetery (german: Invalidenfriedhof) is one of the oldest cemeteries in Berlin. It was the traditional resting place of the Prussian Army, and is regarded as particularly important as a memorial to the German Wars of Liberation of 1813–15. History The cemetery was established in 1748 to provide burial grounds for those veterans wounded in the War of the Austrian Succession, who inhabited a nearby hostel (''Invalidenhaus'') built on the orders of King Frederick the Great. A royal decree of 1824 declared that the ''Invalidenfriedhof'' should become the burial ground for all distinguished Prussian military personnel, including Bogislav Count Tauentzien von Wittenberg. One of the most notable tombs from this period is that of Gerhard von Scharnhorst (a hero of the Napoleonic Wars), designed by Schinkel with a sculpture of a slumbering lion cast out of captured cannon by Rauch. The cemetery was also the resting place of the soldiers killed during the Revolutions ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pollination Ecology
Anthecology, or pollination biology, is the study of pollination as well as the relationships between flowers and their pollinators. Floral biology is a bigger field that includes these studies. Most flowering plants, or angiosperms, are pollinated by animals, and especially by insects. The major flower-frequenting insect taxa include beetles, flies, wasps, bees, ants, thrips, butterflies, and moths. Insects carry out pollination when visiting flowers to obtain nectar or pollen, to prey on other species, or when pseudo-copulating with insect-mimicking flowers such as orchids. Pollination-related interactions between plants and insects are considered mutualistic, and the relationships between plants and their pollinators have likely led to increased diversity of both angiosperms and the animals that pollinate them. Anthecology brings together many disciplines, such as botany, horticulture, entomology, and ecology. History Anthecology began as a descriptive science relying on obs ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Das Entdeckte Geheimnis Der Natur Im Bau Und In Der Befruchtung Der Blumen
''Das entdeckte Geheimnis der Natur im Bau und in der Befruchtung der Blumen'' (''The Secret of Nature in the Form and Fertilisation of Flowers Discovered'') by Christian Konrad Sprengel was published in 1793, but received little acclaim during the author's lifetime. Sprengel's ideas were rejected by other natural history, naturalists when it was published, but the importance of this work was duly appreciated by Charles Darwin some sixty years later. Darwin's use of Sprengel's ideas and reference to this book in the seminal work on the ''Fertilisation of Orchids'' established Sprengel's book as one of the most important works in the fields of floral biology and pollination ecology and its author as a founding father of these fields. The fact that flowers have a sexual role had been recognised earlier by Carl Linnaeus, Linnaeus who did not investigate any functional significance of the visits of insects, but by Sprengel's time it was known that they were sometimes involved in fertil ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pollination Syndrome
Pollination syndromes are suites of flower traits that have evolved in response to natural selection imposed by different pollen vectors, which can be abiotic (wind and water) or biotic, such as birds, bees, flies, and so forth through a process called pollinator-mediated selection. These traits include flower shape, size, colour, odour, reward type and amount, nectar composition, timing of flowering, etc. For example, tubular red flowers with copious nectar often attract birds; foul smelling flowers attract carrion flies or beetles, etc. The "classical" pollination syndromes were first studied in the 19th century by the Italian botanist Federico Delpino. Although they are useful in understanding of plant-pollinator interactions, sometimes the pollinator of a plant species cannot be accurately predicted from the pollination syndrome alone, and caution must be exerted in making assumptions. The naturalist Charles Darwin surmised that the flower of the orchid ''Angraecum sesquipeda ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Insect
Insects (from Latin ') are pancrustacean hexapod invertebrates of the class Insecta. They are the largest group within the arthropod phylum. Insects have a chitinous exoskeleton, a three-part body ( head, thorax and abdomen), three pairs of jointed legs, compound eyes and one pair of antennae. Their blood is not totally contained in vessels; some circulates in an open cavity known as the haemocoel. Insects are the most diverse group of animals; they include more than a million described species and represent more than half of all known living organisms. The total number of extant species is estimated at between six and ten million; In: potentially over 90% of the animal life forms on Earth are insects. Insects may be found in nearly all environments, although only a small number of species reside in the oceans, which are dominated by another arthropod group, crustaceans, which recent research has indicated insects are nested within. Nearly all insects hatch from eggs. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Flower
A flower, sometimes known as a bloom or blossom, is the reproductive structure found in flowering plants (plants of the division Angiospermae). The biological function of a flower is to facilitate reproduction, usually by providing a mechanism for the union of sperm with eggs. Flowers may facilitate outcrossing (fusion of sperm and eggs from different individuals in a population) resulting from cross-pollination or allow selfing (fusion of sperm and egg from the same flower) when self-pollination occurs. There are two types of pollination: self-pollination and cross-pollination. Self-pollination occurs when the pollen from the anther is deposited on the stigma of the same flower, or another flower on the same plant. Cross-pollination is when pollen is transferred from the anther of one flower to the stigma of another flower on a different individual of the same species. Self-pollination happens in flowers where the stamen and carpel mature at the same time, and are positi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Plant
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] |
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