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Katse Botanical Gardens
Katse Botanical Gardens is a centre for Alpine flora in Katse village, Lesotho. The gardens were created as a result of plant rescue missions to mitigate the impact of the Katse Dam, particularly spiral aloes. The collection has a focus on traditional Sotho medicinal plants and has a large seed bank. At an altitude of 2229 meters it claims to be the highest botanical garden in the southern hemisphere. See also * Botanic Gardens Conservation International * Treborth Botanic Garden Treborth Botanic Garden ('' Welsh'': Gardd Fotaneg Treborth), is a botanic garden in Wales, close to the city of Bangor, Gwynedd. It is owned by Bangor University, and is used in teaching for University students, local schools and community groups. ..., twinned with Katse Botanical Gardens References {{reflist External links UNEP Dams and Development Project Environment of Lesotho Botanical gardens in Lesotho ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lesotho
Lesotho ( ), officially the Kingdom of Lesotho, is a country landlocked country, landlocked as an Enclave and exclave, enclave in South Africa. It is situated in the Maloti Mountains and contains the Thabana Ntlenyana, highest mountains in Southern Africa. It has an area of over and has a population of about million. It was previously the British Crown colony of Basutoland, which declared independence from the United Kingdom on 4 October 1966. It is a fully sovereign state and is a member of the United Nations, the Commonwealth of Nations, the African Union, and the Southern African Development Community. The name ''Lesotho'' roughly translates to "land of the Sotho". History Basutoland Basutoland emerged as a single body politic, polity under King Moshoeshoe I in 1822. Moshoeshoe, a son of Mokhachane, a minor tribal chief, chief of the Bakoteli lineage, formed his own clan and became a chief around 1804. Between 1820 and 1823, he and his followers settled at the Buth ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alpine Plants
Alpine plants are plants that grow in an alpine climate, which occurs at high elevation and above the tree line. There are many different plant species and taxa that grow as a plant community in these alpine tundra. These include perennial grasses, sedges, forbs, cushion plants, mosses, and lichens.. Alpine plants are adapted to the harsh conditions of the alpine environment, which include low temperatures, dryness, ultraviolet radiation, wind, drought, poor nutritional soil, and a short growing season. Some alpine plants serve as medicinal plants. Ecology Alpine plants occur in a tundra: a type of natural region or biome that does not contain trees. Alpine tundra occurs in mountains worldwide. It transitions to subalpine forests below the tree line; stunted forests occurring at the forest-tundra ecotone are known as ''Krummholz''. With increasing elevation, it ends at the snow line where snow and ice persist through summer, also known as the Nival Zone. Alpine plants are not ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lonely Planet
Lonely Planet is a travel guide book publisher. Founded in Australia in 1973, the company has printed over 150 million books. History Early years Lonely Planet was founded by married couple Maureen and Tony Wheeler. In 1972, they embarked on an overland trip through Europe and Asia to Australia, following the route of the Oxford and Cambridge Far Eastern Expedition. The company name originates from the misheard "lovely planet" in a song written by Matthew Moore. Lonely Planet's first book, ''Across Asia on the Cheap'', had 94 pages; it was written by the couple in their home. The original 1973 print run consisted of stapled booklets with pale blue cardboard covers. Tony returned to Asia to write ''Across Asia on the Cheap: A Complete Guide to Making the Overland Trip'', published in 1975. Expansion The Lonely Planet guide book series initially expanded to cover other countries in Asia, with the India guide book in 1981, and expanded to rest of the world later on. G ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Katse Dam
The Katse Dam, a concrete arch dam on the Malibamat'so River in Lesotho, is Africa's second largest double-curvature arch dam. (The Tekezé Dam, completed in early 2009, is now Africa's largest double curvature dam). The dam is part of the Lesotho Highlands Water Project, which will eventually include five large dams in remote rural areas. The dam is just below the confluence of the Bokong River, which forms the western arm of the Katse reservoir. The potential of the project was identified by the South African civil engineer Ninham Shand in 1953 as a possible means to supplement the water supply of South Africa's industrial heartland in the Witwatersrand. The World Bank arranged a treaty between the governments of South Africa and Lesotho, allowing the project to proceed. Construction The dam was built by a consortium of Bouygues, Concor, Group 5, Hochtief, Impregilo, Kier Group and Sterling International. The dam was completed in 1996 and the reservoir filled with water by 1 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Aloe Polyphylla
''Aloe polyphylla'', the spiral aloe, ''kroonaalwyn'', ''lekhala kharetsa'', or many-leaved aloe, is a species of flowering plant in the genus '' Aloe'' that is endemic to the Kingdom of Lesotho in the Drakensberg mountains. An evergreen succulent perennial, it is well known for its strikingly symmetrical, five-pointed spiral growth habit. Name and taxonomy ''Aloe polyphylla'' is commonly known as the spiral aloe in English, ''kroonaalwyn'' in Afrikaans, or ''lekhala kharetsa'' in Sesotho. The species epithet ''polyphylla'' means "many-leaved" in Greek. Taxonomically, it forms part of the ''Rhodacanthae'' series of very closely related '' Aloe'' species, together with '' Aloe glauca'', ''Aloe lineata'' and '' Aloe pratensis''.Reynolds, G.W. 1950. ''The aloes of Southern Africa.'' Balkema, Cape Town. Description ''Aloe polyphylla'' is a stemless aloe and grows its leaves in a very distinctive spiral shape which may be clockwise or anti-clockwise. The plants do not seem to suck ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Botanic Gardens Conservation International
Botanic Gardens Conservation International (BGCI) is a plant conservation biology, conservation Charitable organization, charity based in Kew, Surrey, England. It is a membership organisation, working with 800 botanic gardens in 118 countries, whose combined work forms the world's largest plant conservation network. Founded in 1987, BGCI is a Charitable organization, registered charity in the United Kingdom, and its members include the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew and the Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh, as two of its key supporters. The founder and director from 1987 to 1993 was Professor Vernon H Heywood. He was followed in 1994 by Dr. Peter Wyse Jackson (as Secretary-General) who led BGCI till 2005 when Sara Oldfield succeeded him. She was then followed by Paul Smith in 2016 (current acting Secretary-General of BGCI). BGCI's patron is Charles III. Lady Suzanne Warner was Chair of BGCI from December 1999 to December 2004. She received an OBE in the Queen's 2006 New Year's Honours ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sotho People
The Sotho () people, also known as the Basuto or Basotho (), are a Bantu nation native to southern Africa. They split into different ethnic groups over time, due to regional conflicts and colonialism, which resulted in the modern Basotho, who have inhabited the region of Lesotho, South Africa since around the fifth century CE. The modern Basotho identity emerged from the accomplished diplomacy of Moshoeshoe I, who unified the disparate clans of Sotho–Tswana origin that had dispersed across southern Africa in the early 19th century. Most Basotho today live in Lesotho or South Africa, as the area of the Orange Free State was originally part of Moshoeshoe's nation (now Lesotho). History Early history Bantu-speaking peoples had settled in what is now South Africa by about 500 CE. Separation from the Tswana is assumed to have taken place by the 14th century. The first historical references to the Basotho date to the 19th century. By that time, a series of Basotho kingdoms cov ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Medicinal Plants
Medicinal plants, also called medicinal herbs, have been discovered and used in traditional medicine practices since prehistoric times. Plants synthesize hundreds of chemical compounds for various functions, including defense and protection against insects, fungi, diseases, and herbivorous mammals. The earliest historical records of herbs are found from the Sumerian civilization, where hundreds of medicinal plants including opium are listed on clay tablets, c. 3000 BC. The Ebers Papyrus from ancient Egypt, c. 1550 BC, describes over 850 plant medicines. The Greek physician Dioscorides, who worked in the Roman army, documented over 1000 recipes for medicines using over 600 medicinal plants in ''De materia medica'', c. 60 AD; this formed the basis of pharmacopoeias for some 1500 years. Drug research sometimes makes use of ethnobotany to search for pharmacologically active substances, and this approach has yielded hundreds of useful compounds. These include the common drugs asp ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Treborth Botanic Garden
Treborth Botanic Garden (''Welsh'': Gardd Fotaneg Treborth), is a botanic garden in Wales, close to the city of Bangor, Gwynedd. It is owned by Bangor University, and is used in teaching for University students, local schools and community groups. It is also open to the public without charge. It is unusual in having within the garden a large area of native established broad-leaved woodland bounded to the north by the seashore of the Menai Strait History of the Garden The current site was originally developed as a Victorian tourist destination, Britannia Park, by the Chester and Holyhead Railway Company in the 1840s. The grounds were designed by Sir Joseph Paxton, and features of his design can be see today, such as the lime avenue. However, due to a funding crisis the site was abandoned and reverted to pasture and woodland. Funding crises were to become a feature of the sites subsequent history. In 1960, the then University College of North Wales (now Bangor University) bought ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Environment Of Lesotho
Lesotho is a mountainous, landlocked country located in Southern Africa. It is an enclave, surrounded by South Africa. The total length of the country's borders is . Lesotho covers an area of around , of which a negligible percentage is covered with water. The most popular geographic fact about Lesotho, apart from its status as an enclave, is that it is the only independent state in the world that lies entirely above in elevation. Its lowest point is at , the highest lowest point of any country. Because of its elevation, the country's climate is cooler than in most other regions at the same latitude. Its climate zone can be classified as continental. Location Lesotho is a country in Southern Africa, located at around 29°30' south latitude and 28°30' east longitude. It is the 141st largest country in the world, with a total land area of , of which a negligible percentage is covered with water. Lesotho is completely surrounded by South Africa, making it one of only three countrie ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
