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Erica Verticillata
''Erica verticillata'' is a species of ''Erica'' that was naturally restricted to the city of Cape Town but is now classified as extinct in the wild. Distribution It formerly grew only in certain areas of the Cape Flats on the Cape Peninsula of South Africa. Habitat It grew in Cape Flats Sand Fynbos, a fynbos type that is threatened by urban sprawl and fragmentation. It preferred damp sandy soils such as those that were naturally found around Wynberg, Kenilworth and Zeekoevlei. Conservation Although the species became functionally extinct due to agricultural and urban development of its habitat in the early 20th century, cuttings from several plants discovered in the wild in the later 20th century have ensured that the species will continue in cultivation. 1984 saw the introduction of cuttings from two specimens, one in Protea Park, Pretoria and another in Kew. The former were collected by Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden scholar David von Well after he recognized the plan ... [...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] |
Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden
Kirstenbosch is an important botanical garden nestled at the eastern foot of Table Mountain in Cape Town. The garden is one of 10 National Botanical Gardens covering five of South Africa's six different biomes and administered by the South African National Biodiversity Institute (SANBI). Prior to 1 September 2004, the institute was known as the National Botanical Institute. Kirstenbosch places a strong emphasis on the cultivation of indigenous plants. When Kirstenbosch was founded in 1913 to preserve the flora native to the South Africa’s territory, it was the first botanical garden in the world with this ethos, at a time when invasive species were not considered an ecological and environmental problem. The garden includes a large conservatory (The Botanical Society Conservatory) exhibiting plants from a number of different regions, including savanna, fynbos, karoo and others. Outdoors, the focus is on plants native to the Cape region, highlighted by the spectacular colle ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Plants Extinct In The Wild
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 los ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Natural History Of Cape Town
Nature, in the broadest sense, is the physical world or universe. "Nature" can refer to the phenomena of the physical world, and also to life in general. The study of nature is a large, if not the only, part of science. Although humans are part of nature, human activity is often understood as a separate category from other natural phenomena. The word ''nature'' is borrowed from the Old French ''nature'' and is derived from the Latin word ''natura'', or "essential qualities, innate disposition", and in ancient times, literally meant "birth". In ancient philosophy, ''natura'' is mostly used as the Latin translation of the Greek word ''physis'' (φύσις), which originally related to the intrinsic characteristics of plants, animals, and other features of the world to develop of their own accord. The concept of nature as a whole, the physical universe, is one of several expansions of the original notion; it began with certain core applications of the word φύσις by pre-Socr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fynbos
Fynbos (; meaning fine plants) is a small belt of natural shrubland or heathland vegetation located in the Western Cape and Eastern Cape provinces of South Africa. This area is predominantly coastal and mountainous, with a Mediterranean climate and rainy winters. The fynbos ecoregion is within the Mediterranean forests, woodlands, and scrub biome. In fields related to biogeography, fynbos is known for its exceptional degree of biodiversity and endemism, consisting of about 80% (8,500 fynbos) species of the Cape floral kingdom, where nearly 6,000 of them are endemic. This land continues to face severe human-caused threats, but due to the many economic uses of the fynbos, conservation efforts are being made to help restore it. Overview and history The word fynbos is often confusingly said to mean "fine bush" in Afrikaans, as "bos" means "bush". Typical fynbos foliage is ericoid rather than fine. The term, in its pre-Afrikaans, Dutch form, ''fynbosch'', was recorded by Nob ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Flora Of The Cape Provinces
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 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Endemic Flora Of South Africa
Endemism is the state of a species being found in a single defined geographic location, such as an island, state, nation, country or other defined zone; organisms that are indigenous to a place are not endemic to it if they are also found elsewhere. For example, the Cape sugarbird is found exclusively in southwestern South Africa and is therefore said to be ''endemic'' to that particular part of the world. An endemic species can be also be referred to as an ''endemism'' or in scientific literature as an ''endemite''. For example '' Cytisus aeolicus'' is an endemite of the Italian flora. '' Adzharia renschi'' was once believed to be an endemite of the Caucasus, but it was later discovered to be a non-indigenous species from South America belonging to a different genus. The extreme opposite of an endemic species is one with a cosmopolitan distribution, having a global or widespread range. A rare alternative term for a species that is endemic is "precinctive", which applies to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Erica
Erica or ERICA may refer to: * Erica (given name) * ''Erica'' (plant), a flowering plant genus * Erica (chatbot), a service of Bank of America * ''Erica'' (video game), a 2019 FMV video game * ''Erica'' (spider), a jumping spider genus * Erica, Emmen, a village in Drenthe, the Netherlands * Erica, Victoria, a town in Australia **Erica railway station * ERICA: ** Experiment on Rapidly Intensifying Cyclones over the Atlantic, a meteorological system ** Embryo Ranking Intelligent Classification Algorithm, an AI tool for embryologists * HMS ''Erica'' (K50) (1940–1943), a British Royal Navy corvette * SS ''Erica'', an Italian steamship in service 1935-40 * ''Erica'', a 1970s public television program starring Erica Wilson See also *Frederica (other) Frederica or Fredrica may refer to: * Frederica (given name), including a list of notable people who bear the name * Frederica (novel), ''Frederica'' (novel), a romance novel by Georgette Heyer * Frederica, Delaware, Uni ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Southern Double-collared Sunbird
The southern double-collared sunbird or lesser double-collared sunbird (''Cinnyris chalybeus'') is a small passerine bird which breeds in southern Africa. It is mainly resident, but partially migratory in the north-east of its range. Habitat This sunbird is common in gardens, fynbos, forests and coastal scrub. The southern double-collared sunbird breeds from April to December, depending on region. The closed oval nest is constructed from grass, lichen and other plant material, bound together with spider webs. It has a side entrance which sometimes has a porch, and is lined with wool, plant down and feathers. Identification The southern double-collared sunbird is 12 cm long. The adult male has a glossy, metallic green head, throat, upper breast and back. It has a brilliant red band across the chest, separated from the green breast by a narrow metallic blue band. The rest of the underparts are whitish. When displaying, yellow feather tufts can be seen on the shoulders. As w ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rondevlei
The Rondevlei Nature Reserve is located in Grassy Park, Zeekoevlei and Lavenderhill, suburbs of Cape Town, South Africa. The bird sanctuary covers approximately of mostly permanent wetland and consists of a single large brackish lagoon. The nature reserve is among the most important wetlands for birds in South Africa despite being situated directly alongside the Zeekoevlei. A number of islands on the vlei act as vital breeding sites. Rondevlei is home to about 230 bird species, a variety of small mammals and reptiles like caracal, porcupine, Cape fox, grysbuck, steenbuck and mongoose, as well as a hippopotamus population which was re-introduced in 1981 as a means to control an alien grass species from South America, which had covered the shoreline and was threatening to engulf the vlei itself. It boasts unusual and threatened ecosystems like strandveld, sand plains fynbos, Cape lowland wetland vegetation and indigenous coastal fynbos vegetation with unique plants found nowhere e ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pretoria
Pretoria () is South Africa's administrative capital, serving as the seat of the Executive (government), executive branch of government, and as the host to all foreign embassies to South Africa. Pretoria straddles the Apies River and extends eastward into the foothills of the Magaliesberg mountains. It has a reputation as an academic city and center of research, being home to the Tshwane University of Technology (TUT), the University of Pretoria (UP), the University of South Africa (UNISA), the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), and the Human Sciences Research Council. It also hosts the National Research Foundation (South Africa), National Research Foundation and the South African Bureau of Standards. Pretoria was one of the host cities of the 2010 FIFA World Cup. Pretoria is the central part of the City of Tshwane Metropolitan Municipality which was formed by the amalgamation of several former local authorities, including Bronkhorstspruit, Centurion, Gaute ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Erica (plant)
''Erica'' is a genus of roughly 857 species of flowering plants in the family Ericaceae. The English common names heath and heather are shared by some closely related genera of similar appearance. The genus ''Calluna'' was formerly included in ''Erica'' – it differs in having even smaller scale-leaves (less than 2–3 mm long), and the flower corolla consisting of separate petals. ''Erica'' is sometimes referred to as "winter (or spring) heather" to distinguish it from ''Calluna'' "summer (or autumn) heather". Etymology The Latin word ''erica'' means "heath" or "broom". It is believed that Pliny adapted ''erica'' from Ancient Greek ἐρείκη. The expected Anglo-Latin pronunciation, , may be given in dictionaries (''OED'': "Erica"), but is more commonly heard. Description Most of the species of ''Erica'' are small shrubs from high, though some are taller; the tallest are '' E. arborea'' (tree heath) and '' E. scoparia'' (besom heath), both of which can reach up ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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