Henry Harold Welch Pearson
Henry Harold Welch Pearson (28 January 1870 – 3 November 1916) was a British-born South African botanist, chiefly remembered for founding Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden in 1913. Biography Pearson started his career as a chemist's assistant, but changed his interests after attending a lecture on plants by Albert Seward at Eastbourne in 1892. He taught for a while and was awarded a scholarship to Christ's College, Cambridge in 1896, obtaining a first class in the Natural Science Tripos. Pearson published two papers in 1898, dealing with ''Bowenia spectabilis'', a member of the Stangeriaceae from Australia. In the same year he explored the patanas (grassy uplands) in Ceylon for six months, having been awarded a Worts Travelling Scholars Fund. For this ecological dissertation he received the Walsingham Medal from Cambridge, the marine biologist Ernest William MacBride having been the first recipient in 1893. At Cambridge he was appointed Assistant Curator of the herb ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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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]   |
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Long Sutton, Lincolnshire
Long Sutton is a market town in the South Holland district of Lincolnshire, England. It lies in The Fens, close to the Wash, east of Spalding. History Long Sutton belonged historically to the wapentake of Elloe in the Parts of Holland. A flood in 1236 that destroyed Wisbech Castle is also said to have washed away the village of Dolproon (or Dolprun) near Long Sutton and its existence has been handed down in the lines: "When Dolproon stood, Long Sutton was a wood. When Dolproon was washed down, Long Sutton became a town." The Friday market dates back to the early 13th century when the town was a prosperous trading centre. By the mid-14th century, it was considered to be one of the richest communities in Lincolnshire. In the 1800s the town was on the circuits of touring theatre companies, in 1842 the Bullen theatre company performed here. Prosperity continued into the 20th century, helped by the arrival of the railways. In the 1950s eleven trains would daily transport passe ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Harry Marshall Ward
Harry Marshall Ward (21 March 1854 – 26 August 1906), FRS, , was a British botanist, mycologist, and plant pathologist. Born in Hereford, the eldest child of Francis and Mary Marshall Ward, Harry Ward was educated at Lincoln Cathedral school. from c. 1864. He went on to scientific studies at the South Kensington Science and Art Department under Thomas Henry Huxley in 1874. Ward then attended first Owens College, Manchester, in 1875, and subsequently Christ's College, Cambridge, from 1876 to 1879. At Cambridge, Ward achieved a B.A. with First Class honours in the Natural Sciences Tripos. Ward's education at Cambridge was funded by a wealthy fellow student from South Kensington, Louis Lucas. He also studied with leading German botanists Julius von Sachs and Anton de Bary who at the time were way ahead of the English in the field of experimental botany. From early 1880 until 1882, Ward was employed by the British government in Ceylon (modern Sri Lanka) to study the coff ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Eastern Cape
The Eastern Cape is one of the provinces of South Africa. Its capital is Bhisho, but its two largest cities are East London and Gqeberha. The second largest province in the country (at 168,966 km2) after Northern Cape, it was formed in 1994 out of the Xhosa homelands or bantustans of Transkei and Ciskei, together with the eastern portion of the Cape Province. The central and eastern part of the province is the traditional home of the indigenous Xhosa people. In 1820 this area which was known as the Xhosa Kingdom began to be settled by Europeans who originally came from England and some from Scotland and Ireland. Since South Africa's early years, many Xhosas believed in Africanism and figures such as Walter Rubusana believed that the rights of Xhosa people and Africans in general, could not be protected unless Africans mobilized and worked together. As a result, the Eastern Cape is home to many anti-apartheid leaders such as Robert Sobukwe, Oliver Tambo, Nelson Mandel ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Encephalartos
''Encephalartos'' is a genus of cycad native to Africa. Several species of ''Encephalartos'' are commonly referred to as bread trees, bread palms or kaffir bread, since a bread-like starchy food can be prepared from the centre of the stem. The genus name is derived from the Greek words ''en'' (within), ''kephalē'' (head), and ''artos'' (bread), referring to the use of the pith to make food. They are, in evolutionary terms, some of the most primitive living gymnosperms. All the species are endangered, some critically, due to their exploitation by collectors and traditional medicine gatherers. The whole genus is listed under CITES Appendix I which prohibits international trade in specimens of these species except for certain non-commercial motives, such as scientific research. Description Several of the species possess stout trunks. In '' E. cycadifolius'', the main trunks are up to high, and several of them may be united at a base where a former main trunk once grew. The persist ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Ernest Edward Galpin
Ernest Edward Galpin (1858–1941), was a South African botanist and banker. He left some 16,000 sheets to the National Herbarium in Pretoria and was dubbed "the Prince of Collectors" by General Smuts. Galpin discovered half a dozen genera and many hundreds of new species. Numerous species are named after him such as ''Acacia galpinii'', '' Bauhinia galpinii'', ''Cyrtanthus galpinii'', '' Kleinia galpinii'', ''Kniphofia galpinii'', ''Streptocarpus galpinii'' and ''Watsonia galpinii''. He is commemorated in the genus '' Galpinia'' N.E.Br. Nicholas Edward Brown (11 July 1849 in Redhill, Surrey – 25 November 1934 in Kew Gardens, London) was an English plant taxonomist and authority on succulents. He was also an authority on several families of plants, including Asclepiadacea ... as is his farm in the genus '' Mosdenia'' Stent. Early life One of seven sons born in Grahamstown to Henry Carter Galpin, watchmaker and jeweller, and Georgina Maria Luck, Ernest Galpin started ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Herero Wars
The Herero Wars were a series of colonial wars between the German Empire and the Herero people of German South West Africa (present-day Namibia). They took place between 1904 and 1908. Background Pre-colonial South-West Africa The Hereros were cattle grazers, occupying most of central and northern South West Africa. Under the leadership of Jonker Afrikaner, who died in 1861, and then later under the leadership of Samuel Maharero, they had achieved supremacy over the Nama and Orlam peoples in a series of conflicts that had in their later stages, seen the extensive use of fire-arms obtained from European traders. German colonization In the early 1880s, the German statesman Otto von Bismarck, reversing his previous rejection of colonial acquisitions, decided on a policy of imperial expansion. In 1882 Bismarck gave permission to Adolf Lüderitz to obtain lands which Germany would bring within its "protection", under the conditions that a port was established within the territorie ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Welwitschia
''Welwitschia'' is a monotypic gymnosperm genus, comprising solely the distinctive ''Welwitschia mirabilis'', endemic to the Namib desert within Namibia and Angola. ''Welwitschia'' is the only living genus of the family Welwitschiaceae and order Welwitschiales in the division Gnetophyta, and is one of three living genera in Gnetophyta, alongside ''Gnetum'' and ''Ephedra''. Informal sources commonly refer to the plant as a "living fossil". Naming ''Welwitschia'' is named after the Austrian botanist and doctor Friedrich Welwitsch, who described the plant in Angola in 1859. Welwitsch was so overwhelmed by the plant that he, "could do nothing but kneel down ..and gaze at it, half in fear lest a touch should prove it a figment of the imagination." Joseph Dalton Hooker of the Linnean Society of London, using Welwitsch's description and collected material along with material from the artist Thomas Baines who had independently recorded the plant in Namibia, described the species. Wel ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Monotypic
In biology, a monotypic taxon is a taxonomic group (taxon) that contains only one immediately subordinate taxon. A monotypic species is one that does not include subspecies or smaller, infraspecific taxa. In the case of genera, the term "unispecific" or "monospecific" is sometimes preferred. In botanical nomenclature, a monotypic genus is a genus in the special case where a genus and a single species are simultaneously described. In contrast, an oligotypic taxon contains more than one but only a very few subordinate taxa. Examples Just as the term ''monotypic'' is used to describe a taxon including only one subdivision, the contained taxon can also be referred to as monotypic within the higher-level taxon, e.g. a genus monotypic within a family. Some examples of monotypic groups are: Plants * In the order Amborellales, there is only one family, Amborellaceae and there is only one genus, '' Amborella'', and in this genus there is only one species, namely ''Amborella trichopoda. ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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South West Africa
South West Africa ( af, Suidwes-Afrika; german: Südwestafrika; nl, Zuidwest-Afrika) was a territory under South African administration from 1915 to 1990, after which it became modern-day Namibia. It bordered Angola (Portuguese colony before 1975), Botswana ( Bechuanaland before 1966), South Africa, and Zambia (Northern Rhodesia before 1964). Previously the German colony of South West Africa from 1884–1915, it was made a League of Nations mandate of the Union of South Africa following Germany's defeat in the First World War. Although the mandate was abolished by the United Nations in 1966, South African control over the territory continued despite its illegality under international law. The territory was administered directly by the South African government from 1915 to 1978, when the Turnhalle Constitutional Conference laid the groundwork for semi-autonomous rule. During an interim period between 1978 and 1985, South Africa gradually granted South West Africa a limited for ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Harry Bolus
Harry Bolus (28 April 1834 – 25 May 1911) was a South African botanist, botanical artist, businessman and philanthropist. He advanced botany in South Africa by establishing bursaries, founding the Bolus Herbarium and bequeathing his library and a large part of his fortune to the South African College (now the University of Cape Town). Active in scientific circles, he was a Fellow of the Linnean Society, member and president of the South African Philosophical Society (later the Royal Society of South Africa), the SA Medal and Grant by the SA Association for the Advancement of Science and an honorary D.Sc. from the University of the Cape of Good Hope. Biography Bolus was born in Nottingham, England. He was educated at Castle Gate School, Nottingham. The headmaster George Herbert regularly corresponded with and received plant specimens from William Kensit of Grahamstown, South Africa. Kensit requested that the headmaster send him one of his pupils as an assistant; Harry Bolus dul ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Otto Wilhelm Sonder
Otto Wilhelm Sonder (18 June 1812, Bad Oldesloe – 21 November 1881) was a German botanist and pharmacist. Life A native of Holstein, Sonder studied at Kiel University, where he sat pharmaceutical examinations in 1835, before becoming the proprietor of a pharmacy in Hamburg from 1841 to 1878. In 1846 he received an honorary doctorate from the University of Königsberg and was elected a member of the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina for his contribution to the field of botany. Herbarium From a young age, Sonder showed considerable interest and skill in Botany. He often embarked on botanical excursions in his local area early in the morning before heading to work at the pharmacy. Throughout his life, Sonder met and conversed with many eminent botanists of the era. He amassed an extensive botanical collection that contained hundreds of thousands of specimens representing all major plant groups and spanning all parts of the globe. The collection is particularly sign ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |