|
Myoporum Laetum
''Myoporum laetum'', commonly known as ngaio or mousehole tree is a plant in the family Scrophulariaceae endemic to New Zealand, including the Chatham Islands. It is a fast growing shrub, readily distinguished from others in the genus by the transparent dots in the leaves which are visible when held to a light. Description Ngaio is a fast-growing evergreen shrub or small tree which sometimes grows to a height of with a trunk up to in diameter, or spreads to as much as . It often appears dome-shaped at first but as it gets older, distorts as branches break off. The bark on older specimens is thick, corky and furrowed. The leaves are lance-shaped, usually long, wide, have many translucent dots in the leaves and edges which have small serrations in approximately the outer half. The flowers are white with purple spots and are borne in groups of 2 to 6 on stalks long. There are 5 egg-shaped, pointed sepals and 5 petals joined at their bases to form a bell-shaped tube long. The ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Georg Forster
Johann George Adam Forster, also known as Georg Forster (, 27 November 1754 – 10 January 1794), was a German naturalist, ethnologist, travel writer, journalist and revolutionary. At an early age, he accompanied his father, Johann Reinhold Forster, on several scientific expeditions, including James Cook's second voyage to the Pacific. His report of that journey, ''A Voyage Round the World'', contributed significantly to the ethnology of the people of Polynesia and remains a respected work. As a result of the report, Forster, who was admitted to the Royal Society at the early age of twenty-two, came to be considered one of the founders of modern scientific travel literature. After returning to continental Europe, Forster turned toward academia. He taught natural history at the Collegium Carolinum in the Ottoneum, Kassel (1778–84), and later at the Academy of Vilna (Vilnius University) (1784–87). In 1788, he became head librarian at the University of Mainz. Most of his ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rhopalostylis Sapida
''Rhopalostylis sapida'', commonly known as nīkau ( mi, nīkau), is a palm tree endemic to New Zealand, and the only palm native to mainland New Zealand. Etymology is a Māori word; in the closely related Eastern Polynesian languages of the tropical Pacific, it refers to the fronds or the midrib of the coconut palm. Distribution The nīkau palm is the only palm species endemic to mainland New Zealand. Its natural range is coastal and lowland forest on the North Island, and on the South Island as far south as Okarito (43°20′S) in the west and Banks Peninsula (43°5′S) in the east. It also occurs on Chatham Island and Pitt Island/Rangiauria to the south-east of New Zealand, where it is the world's southernmost palm at 44° 18'S latitude.Esler, A. E. 'The Nikau Palm', ''New Zealand's Nature Heritage'', Vol.2 Part 19 p.532, 1974 Nīkau grow up to 15 m tall, with a stout, green trunk which bears grey-green leaf scars. The trunk is topped by a smooth, bulging crownshaft ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Plants Described In 1786
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 ability ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Trees Of New Zealand
New Zealand's long geological isolation means that most of its flora is unique, with many durable hard woods. There is a wide variety of native trees, adapted to all the various micro-climates in New Zealand. The native bush (forest) ranges from the subtropical kauri forests of the northern North Island, temperate rainforests of the West Coast, the alpine forests of the Southern Alps / Kā Tiritiri o te Moana and Fiordland to the coastal forests of the Abel Tasman National Park and the Catlins. In the early period of British colonisation, many New Zealand trees were known by names derived from the names of unrelated European trees, but more recently the trend has been to adopt the native Māori language names into English. For a listing in order of Māori name, with species names for most, see the ''Flora of New Zealand'' list overnacular names The New Zealand Plant Conservation Network has published a list of New Zealand indigenous vascular plants including all 574 native tr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Myoporum
''Myoporum'' is a genus of flowering plants in the figwort family, Scrophulariaceae (formerly placed in Myoporaceae). There are 30 species in the genus, eighteen of which are endemic to Australia although others are endemic to Pacific Islands, including New Zealand, and one is endemic to two Indian Ocean islands. They are shrubs or small trees with leaves that are arranged alternately and have white, occasionally pink flowers and a fruit that is a drupe. Description Plants in this genus are shrubs or small trees, mostly glabrous with simple leaves that are arranged alternately and often lack a petiole (although the leaves often taper towards the base). The flowers are adapted for pollination by insects and have white, (sometimes pinkish) petals and usually 4 stamens. The fruit is a drupe with its central seed surrounded by a hard endocarp and usually succulent mesocarp. Taxonomy and naming The genus ''Myoporum'' was first formally described in 1786 by Georg Forster, from an unpu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Catherine Alexander (botanist)
Catherine Alexander (married name Rowe; 8 December 1862 – 17 March 1928) was a New Zealand botanist, and the first known woman to publish a paper in the Royal Society Te Apārangi's Transactions in 1886. Early life and education Alexander was born in Kaiapoi in December 1862, to George and Mary Ann Alexander, Hatch. George Alexander was a baker. She received her education at the day school belonging to St Luke's Church in Christchurch. She studied at Canterbury College from 1882, concentrating on English (taught by John MacMillan Brown) and botany (taught at that time by Frederick Wollaston Hutton). She received an Exhibition Scholarship towards her botany honours degree work. She graduated with a Bachelor of Arts with first-class honours in botany and second-class honors in English in 1885 and then worked at Christchurch Girls' High School as an assistant teacher until her marriage. Scientific work Her paper on ngaio (a small New Zealand native tree), "''Observations ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Calabash
Calabash (; ''Lagenaria siceraria''), also known as bottle gourd, white-flowered gourd, long melon, birdhouse gourd, New Guinea bean, Tasmania bean, and opo squash, is a vine grown for its fruit. It can be either harvested young to be consumed as a vegetable, or harvested mature to be dried and used as a utensil, container, or a musical instrument. When it is fresh, the fruit has a light green smooth skin and white flesh. Calabash fruits have a variety of shapes: they can be huge and rounded, small and bottle-shaped, or slim and serpentine, and they can grow to be over a metre long. Rounder varieties are typically called calabash gourds. The gourd was one of the world's first cultivated plants grown not primarily for food, but for use as containers. The bottle gourd may have been carried from Asia to Africa, Europe, and the Americas in the course of human migration, or by seeds floating across the oceans inside the gourd. It has been proven to have been globally domesticated (an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Māori Mythology
Māori mythology and Māori traditions are two major categories into which the remote oral history of New Zealand's Māori may be divided. Māori myths concern fantastic tales relating to the origins of what was the observable world for the pre-European Māori, often involving gods and demigods. Māori tradition concerns more folkloric legends often involving historical or semi-historical forebears. Both categories merge in to explain the overall origin of the Māori and their connections to the world which they lived in. Māori had yet to invent a writing system before European contact, beginning in 1769, so they had no method to permanently record their histories, traditions, or mythologies. They relied on oral retellings memorised from generation to generation. The three forms of expression prominent in Māori and Polynesian oral literature are genealogical recital, poetry, and narrative prose. Experts in these subjects were broadly known as . The rituals, beliefs, and ge ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
William Pember Reeves
William Pember Reeves (10 February 1857 – 16 May 1932) was a New Zealand politician, cricketer, historian and poet who promoted social reform. Early life and career Reeves's parents were William Reeves, who was a journalist and politician, and Ellen Reeves, ''née'' Pember. They had migrated from Britain to Canterbury Province in 1857, arriving three weeks before he was born. He was educated at a private prep school in Christchurch, the local high school and, from 1867 to 1874, Christ's College Grammar School. Before entering politics, Reeves was a lawyer and journalist. He was editor of the ''Canterbury Times'' in 1885 and the ''Lyttelton Times'' (1889–1891). Cricket Reeves played in five first-class cricket matches for Canterbury from 1879 to 1888. A batsman, his highest score was 54, Canterbury's top score in the match, when Canterbury beat Otago by four runs in February 1883. Political career Reeves represented the Christchurch electorate of St Albans in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Māori People
The Māori (, ) are the indigenous Polynesian people of mainland New Zealand (). Māori originated with settlers from East Polynesia, who arrived in New Zealand in several waves of canoe voyages between roughly 1320 and 1350. Over several centuries in isolation, these settlers developed their own distinctive culture, whose language, mythology, crafts, and performing arts evolved independently from those of other eastern Polynesian cultures. Some early Māori moved to the Chatham Islands, where their descendants became New Zealand's other indigenous Polynesian ethnic group, the Moriori. Initial contact between Māori and Europeans, starting in the 18th century, ranged from beneficial trade to lethal violence; Māori actively adopted many technologies from the newcomers. With the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi in 1840, the two cultures coexisted for a generation. Rising tensions over disputed land sales led to conflict in the 1860s, and massive land confiscations, to which ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Noxious Weed
A noxious weed, harmful weed or injurious weed is a weed that has been designated by an agricultural or other governing authority as a plant that is injurious to agricultural or horticultural crops, natural habitats or ecosystems, or humans or livestock. Most noxious weeds have been introduced into an ecosystem by ignorance, mismanagement, or accident. Some noxious weeds are native. Typically they are plants that grow aggressively, multiply quickly without natural controls (native herbivores, soil chemistry, etc.), and display adverse effects through contact or ingestion. Noxious weeds are a large problem in many parts of the world, greatly affecting areas of agriculture, forest management, nature reserves, parks and other open space. Many noxious weeds have come to new regions and countries through contaminated shipments of feed and crop seeds or were intentionally introduced as ornamental plants for horticultural use. Some "noxious weeds", such as ragwort, produce copious amou ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
